Oscar winner actress Sandra Bullock sat down with Hoda Kotb and Nicole Kidman while promoting “Practical Magic 2.” Rather than a typical press-run small talk, she opened up about motherhood and what it means to raise Black children in a country that doesn’t always see them as hers.
Bullock, 62, is mom to 16-year-old Louis, adopted in 2010, and 13-year-old Laila, who came into her life through foster care in 2015. Both of her kids are Black. She’s not.
“I’m uber paranoid, and they will tell you,” Bullock admitted. Her kids try to ease her mind, telling her it’s going to be fine. She’s not buying it. “I’m like, ‘It’s not fine. It’s not fine outside,'” she said, pointing to what she called the energy floating around the country and the world right now.
She went on to elaborate, “The color of their skin,” Bullock continued. “They’re my babies, they’re my life, but no one knows that when they leave my house. So that is always in the forefront of my mind.”
Her daughter, Laila, was born in 2012 and came into Bullock’s life in 2015 through the foster care system, meaning Laila spent time in foster care before Bullock adopted her. Bullock has spoken about how different the two adoption journeys were, one through a private process, the other through foster care, but has described both of her kids as the center of her world, referring to them as “her babies” and “her life” in multiple interviews.
Now, this isn’t new territory for Bullock. She’s talked before about a gut check conversation with Louis when he was just six years old and put on a hoodie. She asked him what it looked like he was doing. His answer: “I look like I’m hiding.” She pushed him, did he have anything to hide? He said no. That was the lesson. A six-year-old already learning how the world reads him before he’s even said a word.
She’s also been honest about the harder, more personal side of raising kids who don’t share her skin. On “Red Table Talk” with Jada Pinkett Smith, Bullock admitted there are moments she wishes her skin matched her children’s, saying it would make things easier in how people approach the family. Willow Smith pushed back in the moment, saying motherhood shouldn’t need a color attached to it at all. Bullock’s response was simple: maybe one day the world gets there.
For now, though, she’s not pretending the world has arrived. Bullock told Kotb she’s working on trusting her kids more and worrying a little less now that they’re both navigating their teens with more confidence than she sometimes gives them credit for. But the fear doesn’t disappear,,it just gets managed.