Mason Gooding Says He ‘Didn’t Really Understand’ How Dad Cuba Gooding Jr. Could Be ‘So Positive’ Publicly But ‘Different Guy’ at Home

Rachel RaposasWed, July 29, 2026 at 5:43 PM UTC

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Mason Gooding and Cuba Gooding Jr.Credit: WireImage(2) -

Mason Gooding reflected on his childhood, which was heavily influenced by his father’s acting career and subsequent spotlight

Cuba Gooding Jr.’s long absences for work led to “speed-parenting,” Mason said

“You’re so positive and charismatic in these interviews, and then you come home and it’s a different guy,” Mason recalled thinking of his father

Mason Gooding is opening up about growing up while his father, Cuba Gooding Jr., was in the spotlight.

The Scream 7 star, 29, reflected on the conflicting versions of his father he experienced during his childhood while on Dylan Sprouse and Brenden Columbus’s Wildmen podcast on July 28. Cuba, the 58-year-old son of singer Cuba Gooding, gained fame and acclaim as an actor with roles in Boyz n the Hood in 1991 and Jerry Maguire in 1996 — welcoming Mason in the same year as the latter.

“My father was an actor and grandfather was a singer,” Mason said. “I have probably a stronger relationship and understanding based on who they were publicly than who they were privately.”

Mason Gooding and Cuba Gooding Jr.Credit: GC Images

Because Cuba was so often away from his family for work, Mason recalled his father trying to “speed-parent,” in which he’d appear after weeks away and cram days of advice, criticism and help into a small timeframe.

“I didn’t really understand that relationship, because I was like, ‘You’re so positive and charismatic in these interviews, and then you come home and it’s a different guy.’ And I didn’t get that correlation, or lack thereof.”

He added that the “dissonance between who I get at home and who you are on camera” was a defining factor in understanding his relationship with his father. In fact, these days, any advice he gives to actors with children boils down to one concept: that their public image is “being consumed by your child the way an audience does.”

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But now that Mason is an actor himself, his father’s approach to his career and parenting makes more sense to him. In his mind, an “actor’s worst fear” is leaving their family for a project for months at a time and subsequently missing their spouse’s or their kids’ major milestones.

Thus, Mason has found that there’s an extreme feeling that actors — or anyone who spends long bouts of time away from their loved ones — experience when they return, like a powerful need to make up for lost time.

“All people fear the creep of time, and how it affects their relationships,” Mason said, and suggested that was the case for his father.

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Cuba and his then-wife Sara Kapfer first welcomed Mason’s brother Spencer in 1994, and two years later, the Heart Eyes actor followed. The couple welcomed a daughter, Piper, in 2005 before ultimately splitting in 2014 after 20 years of marriage, and finalizing their divorce three years later.

In 2014, Cuba said on the No Judgement Zonepodcast that he and Kapfer “raised real good kids” who were able to navigate lives in the spotlight “pretty well.”

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”