Baller Alert Entertainment & Lifestyle
Dwyane Wade is revealing details to the world about a private part of his life in his new ESPN documentary, ‘D. Wade: Life Unexpected.’
In the documentary, he talks about a baby he had with a longtime friend, while he and then-girlfriend Gabrielle Union, since he’d been with since 2008, took a break in 2013 to focus on their careers.
During their break, Wade had his now six-year-old son, Xavier, with a friend of his, Aja Metoyer.
“I had a child with someone else, and I had to tell her,” he shares. “Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is man up and tell Gabrielle Union that I’ve had a child with somebody else. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t eating.”
Prior to their 2013 split, Wade already had two children, Zaire, 18, and Zaya, 12, with his ex-wife and high school sweetheart, Siohvaughn Funches. Back in 2014, Wade also gained custody of his nephew, Dahveon, 18.
“When you hold something in that you know is going to come out and you have this information and you know it’s gonna fuck somebody’s life up, that you care about, that you love, if it don’t hurt you, then you’re not human,” Wade continued.
However, while it may have been hard telling Union at the time, the two were able to make it past that difficult moment and went on to announce their engagement in Dec. 2013, and tied the know the following year.
“Me and Gab just went through something that you never want to go through and we still came out of it,” he said.
The documentary also sees Wade open up about him and Union struggling to have a kid of their own after having multiple miscarriages.
Wade and Union share a one-year-old daughter named Kaviaa, born through a surrogate.
Wade reveals that that experience is what helped him decide to retire.
“That was my push away from the game,” he explained. “It was time. There just came a point when I had to look in the mirror and say, ‘What more do you want out of this?’”
Wade has also been in the media a lot lately, after announcing that his 12-year-old Zaya, changed her pronouns.
Wade spoke about the response that his parenting has been receiving at the premiere of his documentary telling Entertainment Tonight, “We’re not the only family that deals with all the things we’ve spoken about. We’re not the only family that had to deal with surrogacy, to bring our daughter into the world. We’re not the only family that’s had to deal with gender expression, gender identity, sexuality, with their child.”
He continued adding that he’s going to use his God-given platform, to help better educate our community stating, “We understand the position we’ve been put in, especially in our community, and even though it’s not always a popular thing to speak out on issues that people are uncomfortable with or not as educated on. But this is the platform that God gave me and my family, so we use it.”
According to ET, ‘Life Unexpected’ will also feature never-before-seen home footage and a more in-depth look into the earlier part of his relationship with Union. The documentary also explains, according to Wade’s manager, that the former NBA star maintained a crush on Union for a long time and even had posters of her in his room in college. Wade’s kids loved the actress too, thus it was a no-brainer that they be apart of the proposal.
“She wasn’t just marrying me, she was marrying all this baggage,” he said, explaining why he included his kids in his proposal.
‘D. Wade: Life Unexpected,’ airs Sunday, Feb. 23, at 9 pm ET, on ESPN.
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