Forget the birds and bees. Thandie Newton gets real with her kids when it comes to talking about the three letter word. The actress tells The Edit that she withholds nothing when talking to her children about sex.
“I said, ‘Daddy has a beautiful penis, which enters Mama, and these two precious parts of us join together.’ A few days later, Ripley came home from school, saying, ‘Mommy, I had to tell Don he was wrong today. Don said sex is when a man makes his willy go really hard and then beats the woman with it’ . . . Lucky I got to her first.”
Thandie Newton is one of the thousands who has experienced sexual abuse in her lifetime. The celebrity mom discussed the tumultuous experience with her daughters in hopes of it helping them avoid such abuse. “I told them that the first time I ever had any sexual encounter, it was abuse,” Thandie reveals to The Edit. “Eventually, my 12-year-old stopped me and said, ‘Mom, don’t worry. I am way cooler than you were at my age.'”
Hollywood has brought many challenges Thandie’s way but the actress is not one to concede to trials. “I’m challenged all the time,” the actress tells The Edit. “Being a woman who doesn’t want to communicate sexually as a way of making people comfortable; being a woman in a tough industry; being a spokesperson for voiceless women; being African, but also being English. There are so many things I need to speak for.”
Among all the things for which she serves as an advocate, speaking up for women’s rights is Thandie’s most passionate subject. “It’s who I am, so I may as well have a little root around,” she shares. “And I’m a mother; I want to figure this stuff out for my children too.”
Thandie Newton has two daughters, Ripley and Nico, and a son named Booker.
