Chet Hanks is taking the word “nepotism” and spilling the ‘t.’ In a new YouTube video called “The Truth About Growing Up as a Hanks,” the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson said that he struggled as a child in his famous father’s shadow, especially because, “I didn’t have a strong male role model.”
Hanks tells the story speaking directly into the camera, keeping his shirt off for the first ten minutes so you know it’s coming from the heart. He begins by saying, “I’ve come a long way since ‘White Boy Summer,’” his bizarre ode to caucasian maleness that dropped less than a year ago.
As for his childhood, “My experience was even more complicated because on top of fame already being toxic, I wasn’t even famous, you know? I was just the son of somebody famous. I hadn’t done anything to deserve any sort of recognition.
“That created a lot of contempt for me,” said Hanks, who once insisted he was allowed to use the N-word. “My dad is beloved, he’s on this pedestal, but for me it created a lot of contempt.”
“People automatically assumed in general that I would just be a really arrogant, entitled spoiled brat,” added the man who talked in a fake Jamaican accent at the Golden Globes. “Even though I really wasn’t. I’m really privileged but I wasn’t spoiled.”
“My parents didn’t spoil me,” he repeated. “I was never just given money or an allowance. I had to work and earn everything that I’ve made, it’s been that way my entire life. Growing up, if I needed money to go out and have fun with my friends, my dad would be like, ‘Ok, you want some money? Go wash my car, I’ll give you 60 bucks.'”
After all, who among us hasn’t toiled for 20, perhaps even 30 minutes, and all for a measly $60? “Everything was earned,” he said.
“That’s what I didn’t understand as a kid,” Hanks added. “That these people were fucking jealous of me and they were projecting their own insecurities onto me. I needed to hear that as a kid. I didn’t have a strong male role model to tell me that, to tell me: ‘Hey bro, fuck these people, they’re just jealous of you. You have all these things that they want, so they’re trying to fucking throw their shade at you so you can feel shitty about yourself because they’re jealous.'”
In his more reflective moments, Hanks delves into his own “posturing” that “led me down the wrong path,” and the deep insecurities he’s only now beginning to understand. After ten minutes, he actually demonstrates personal growth by putting on a shirt. Check out the video below.
