Omari Hardwick and Lance Gross Open Up About Losing a Child

Earlier this week, Lance Gross turned his camera on “Power” star Omari Hardwick to discuss the importance of keeping the mind, body and spirit in a positive space. The two touched on Hardwick’s daily rituals and routines, family and fatherhood.

According to ESSENCE, the two then went on to discuss a more personal issue, and how protecting one’s well-being can also compromise one’s career. Gross opened up the discussion, asking Hardwick if there was ever a time that he had to choose between a job or a person and his own well-being, to which he responded with a story about the devastating experience of losing a child.

“The sixth year of my working career as an actor, we were pregnant with my first child,” Omari revealed. “Filming [the movie] ‘Dark Blue,’ lying to ‘Kick Ass’ so that I could do both – and dealing with the baby sliding and not doing well.”

“The doctors let us know, you know, that if it were them, they would have aborted and we chose not to,” he continued. “So, just riding that out for months in terms of like, not wanting to go to work and even having somebody secure enough and strong enough at home to say, ‘No, you have to go to work.’ And then it came to a place where we lost the baby. Ironically, the day that we delivered the baby, I was forced to work.”

“It was the first moment, to me, where I was –this was a moment of anger at the industry,” he said, prompting Gross to share his own experience with dealing with the traumatic experience while working. “We lost a child and I remember getting the call from my wife in the middle of a scene, and I got the call from her and it did something. I felt like I should have been there,” Gross said.

“We learn how many people share those stories but nobody talks about them,” Hardwick added of the experience. He stated that he keeps his sanity through his marriage, the gym and writing amid the craziness of the world and his career.