Many people know Dennis Rodman as an NBA superstar, a flamboyant public figure and notorious '90s bad boy. But he’s also a son and a father. In this clip from the season two premiere of “Oprah: Where Are They Now,” Rodman reveals his true feelings about his estranged father and confesses that he has difficulties being a father himself.
In the clip, Rodman says that the last time he spoke to “that guy I call my father” was last year, when Rodman was playing a basketball game in the Philippines. (Prior to that, they hadn't spoken since Rodman was a child.) At first, Rodman didn’t even realize his father was there. “I’m like, ‘What father?’” Rodman recalls. “I just played it off. The guys in the locker room were like, ‘Don’t say nothing about him.’”
But Rodman says he felt compelled to say something, out of respect. “At the end of the game, I got on the mic,” he remembers. “I said, ‘There’s a guy here who says he’s my dad and he’s sitting right over there.’ So I did that. That’s the only time I talked to him.”
A father himself, Rodman says that he hasn’t turned out like his dad. “I’m not like my real father,” he says. “He had all these damn kids and stuff like that. I’ve only got four kids.”
Yet the father of four admits that he has his own shortfalls as a parent. “I don’t know how to be a father,” he says. “My last wife said, ‘You don’t know how to hug your kids. You don’t have no interest in your kids.’ I said, ‘Yes I do. I just don’t know how to show it.’”
Rodman says that this behavior was something he may have picked up from his mother. “She never hugged us. Never kissed us. I’m the same way, I guess,” he says. “[But] I kiss my kids now… I’m a little more open now with that.”
Tune in to watch the full episode with Dennis Rodman on “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” airing Tuesday, March 19, at 10 p.m. ET on OWN.
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