Entertainment
Mary Steenburgen’s Son Charlie McDowell Caught His Friends Watching Her Naked in a Movie: ‘That’s My Mom!’
NEED TO KNOW
- Ted Danson recounted an awkward encounter when his stepson walked in on his teenage friends watching a naked scene of his mom in her 1980 movie Melvin and Howard
- The actor recalled his stepson saying, “That’s my mom! What are you doing?”
- Danson and Steenburgen, who each have two kids from previous marriages, recently celebrated 30 years of marriage
Charlie McDowell doesn’t necessarily want to see everything his mom does onscreen.
During an Oct. 8 episode of Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, the Cheers alum, 77, shared a funny story about how McDowell, 42, his wife Mary Steenburgen’s son, unexpectedly walked in on his friends watching one of his mom’s risqué movie scenes.
“Mary did a film, Melvin and Howard, and she won the Academy Award for that. And she has a scene, because she’s a dancer in this bar, where she’s buck naked — it’s brilliant and it’s wonderful,” Danson explained to guest Kathryn Hahn. “Charlie, her son, when he was 15 maybe, he and his buddies are just [on a] Friday night bored and flipping around.”
Danson and Steenburgen, 72, who each have two kids from previous relationships, joined their families when they tied the knot on Martha’s Vineyard in 1995.
“[Charlie] goes out to get a sandwich and comes back into the room,” the Good Place actor continued recounting. “His friend had innocently landed on that scene. He clicked on it, and Charlie walked back in and just reamed him out. He was so angry: ‘That’s my mom! What are you doing? ”
For her part, Hahn, 52, could relate to McDowell’s experience all too well. In fact, she said that her and husband Ethan Sandler’s 19-year-old son, Leonard Sandler, “can’t see any of the movies” that came from the chapter of her life in which she gravitated toward raunchy comedies.
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“He would be devastatingly embarrassed,” she said. “Just the thought of his mom in a movie like that or some of the other things I’ve done is understandably a nightmare.”
Going on to reference an especially explicit scene in her 2008 film Step Brothers — which she starred in alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Scott and more — Hahn recalled that, when she first showed it to her son and 16-year-old daughter, Mae Marie Sandler, “my husband and I fast-forwarded so much of it that I think they saw a 17-minute movie.”
Holding his hands in front of his eyes, Danson said that his own mother had a very similar experience while watching his 1981 movie Body Heat.
“I wasn’t with her, but people told me she had her hands in front of her eyes the entire time,” he quipped.
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