Terry Crews has opened up about the time he got into a physical fight with his father because he hit his mother, Patricia Ann.
In a recent interview for Shannon Sharpe's Club Shay Shay, the actor and former NFL player was asked about the incident, which he previously told Bear Grylls about in a 2021 episode of Running Wild. "That was the darkest day," Crews said around the 1:59:00 point of the podcast, seen above. "You got to understand the context of that situation is he had just hit my mother. I wasn't there, but I got a phone call. 'Oh, your daddy just hit your mama.' Now, I'm a grown-ass man, post-NFL, I already played the league. Like, 'Hey man, what? I'm 245. I ain't five, you ain't talking to a five-year-old boy.'"
He said that the time his father, also named Terry Crews, hit his mother happened around the holidays. "Dude, he knocked her tooth sideways, it was crooked," he continued. "Hit her dead in the mouth, she bleeding. I said, 'Didn't I tell you?' Now bruh, everything came out at that one time. It wasn't that I didn't see him as a father anymore, it was... I'm five, and you're that dude that I was so scared of and I gotta get rid of this right now. Now you gonna get what you've been giving."
He admitted that he felt "horrible" after doing it. "I beat his ass, and I felt nothing," he said. "I thought I was going to feel, 'Oh this is great, this is wonderful, now finally it's all straight.' Felt worse. 'Cause now I just beat up the man that brought me into this world." Crews suggested that no one has felt better after giving into their anger, using road rage as an example.
Sharpe asked him what his Dad said to him after the incident, but Crews said he didn't even want to look at him.
"I was ashamed," he said. "A man is never meant to attack his parents. ... But let me tell you, we did have a great moment about ten years later because I left and never came back for a long time. ... During my therapy sessions, I called my father up and I said, 'You know I need to talk to you because I need to find one thing that I'm thankful for you for.' I said, 'I'm thankful for you for having me, because if you didn't have me I wouldn't exist.' I said, 'Thank you for being my father.' ... He cried, he apologized, he said he was sorry. I flew home and we hugged it out. I was like, 'Maybe you on a new path.'"
He said he's been able to repair his relationship with his father since thanks to that phone call.
Earlier in the podcast, he spoke about the time he kissed his father on the cheek when he was a child and the reaction he got. "He looked at me like I had an eye in the middle of my forehead," Crews shared at the 1:56:00 point. "I was just waiting for this, like, 'I love you son.' I was like, 'I love you Dad.' ... I thought, 'I'll never do that again.' It kind of became where I knew that's where we were going to be, you know what I mean?"
Per USA Today, Crews told Bear Grylls in 2021 that he had a feeling he would "have to fight" his father because he was abusive towards his mother. "I always, always had been like, 'Be fit, be ready, be prepared, be there,'" he said, noting he was just five when he came to this conclusion.
Watch the full interview up top.
