The singer, 42, is on this week’s finale episode of Your Mama’s Kitchen: Conversations from the Heart of the Home podcast this week to talk about her family life. When asked about siblings, Jennifer Hudson had a surprising story to tell.
“Your father had a big personality,” host Michele Norris said. “And you went with your siblings and went and found him at some point and found that you had a lot more siblings?”
“Yes, a lot of us. Apparently he had 27 children,” Hudson shared.
A shocked Norris noted “that’s a lot of children,” before the EGOT winner went on to explain that she never met them all, but “that’s what we were always told.” She said that when she found out about them at 16, she wanted to look deeper into her family.
“It was my dream to have all of us at this grand Thanksgiving or Christmas table, and we all sit and eat together — that was my goal at 16,” she explained.
The talk show host explained that she ended up meeting six or seven of them along with the siblings she grew up with, Jason and Julia.
“We found quite a few of us,” she said, adding, “And I’m the youngest of all of them.”
As for them finding out about her, Hudson said it was her father’s side of the family that helped unite the siblings she ended up meeting.
“When my grandma on his side passed, my siblings over there were like, ‘Y’all got a sister that can really sing, you should meet her,’” she revealed. “And eventually we all came together.”
Hudson is the mother to a son, 14-year-old David Daniel Otunga Jr. who she shares with ex David Otunga. Last year, she brought him to the White House for Juneteenth and later opened up about the importance of raising a young Black man in her cover story for Real Simple.
“I want my son to be a part of those things—and his cousins and friends,” she said. “Little David has a really big heart, and he always wants to include them. So I said, ‘I’ll sing, but I have to bring my boys.’”
“And I told the guys, ‘When you all get old and you have children, you’re going to say, ‘I was there for the first Juneteenth.’ And to be able to sing for it—that’s something I will never forget.”
On the podcast, Hudson spoke about wanting her son to grow up around family, explaining, “I love to try to make sure he has the closest thing to him… just making sure he has his cousins circle and that base and foundation. That’s part of why I had moved back to Chicago, because I wanted him to have the surroundings of his family around him growing up.”
“Now we’re here in L.A. and so we make a point to like, have our Sunday dinners. That’s one thing that’s very important,” she continued. “And then he has cousins that come in and out. One of them is here right now. And so to keep that family burning… So he has that same upbringing or going to see the loved ones I talked to.”
“We have a huge family. People like the fact that y’all are this close and your family is this big. Like, all of us are still very connected,” she added.
