Interviewers Keep Asking Maya Rudolph The Same Question Decades Into Her Career

With a career spanning nearly three decades in TV and film, one would think there would be an endless well of potential questions to ask beloved entertainer Maya Rudolph.

Be that as it may, the Emmy-winning actress, 52, recently shared her frustration over interviewers asking questions about the life-changing “tragedy” she suffered through when she was just a child.

Before she was ever a household name, Rudolph was the youngest child of music composer Richard Rudolph and the late Minnie Ripperton, the Grammy-winning singer behind the 1970s classic hit, “Lovin’ You.”

Ripperton would sadly succumb to breast cancer in 1979 at the age of 31. Rudolph was only 7 years old when the tragedy occurred.

As reported by xoNecole, the Saturday Night Live performer expressed recently that the sad event is brought to her in nearly every interview she participates in.

“My whole career, people have always brought up my mom, which is wonderful,” the comedian stated. “But then they also bring up the tragedy of losing my mother when I was little.”

“They ask me how old I was when she died,” Rudolph further recalled. “The other day, I said, ‘Why the f-ck are we still doing this?’”

As Rudolph noted, Ripperton’s death and the effect it had on her as a child has long been publicized.

A simple Google search on the subject will bring readers to a lengthy interview with Variety where the comedienne was asked, among other things, how she coped with the heavy loss at such a young age.

"For many, many years, I couldn't even touch this conversation,” Rudolph relayed. “My mom died when I was 7. I don't remember if I ever did proper grieving. I know I did, but it came out in [different] ways. I think that children process [loss] very differently. And I'm genuinely fascinated by it, so I wish I knew all the ways that I do or did [grieve her], but I don't.”

Now as an adult, Rudolph says she doesn’t understand why interviewers would want her to revisit such a sad period of her young life.

“First of all, if you know me and you know who I am, you already have that information,” she said during her most recent sit-down. “And the second thing is, who wants to be asked about their childhood trauma every time they talk about their career? I’m 52 years old, and I have survived my childhood trauma.”

Along with vocalizing her feelings about the late Ripperton, Rudolph has also used the platform that brought her to households around the country to pay tribute to her.

During each of her three hosting duties on SNL, Rudolph has recreated photographs of Ripperton taken for the singer’s album covers.

In a sweet full-circle moment, Ripperton once honored her young daughter by melodically chanting her name at the end of the hit, “Lovin’ You.”

Now a mother herself (she has four children with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson), the hilarious Rudolph finds herself dealing with a different set of losses; namely, seeing her oldest child off to college earlier this summer.

“It’s just really confusing,” she acknowledged. “Why the f-ck do we let them go? I’m nowhere near understanding it yet. Why did they invent parenthood this way? It’s all painful. I’m OK, but I can’t lie, it’s hard. Changing diapers was so much easier!”

Less confusing to Rudolph is accepting her role as ‘Mother’ of the current comedy generation – which she celebrated in a now Emmy-nominated SNL opening monologue back in May.

“The younger generation started asking me the questions that I used to ask the people that I watched on the show,” she says, “and I realized, ‘Oh, now I’m an elder!”

“Is this what happens when you become older?” Rudolph continued. “You get to a place where you have this status, and the only words left are for royalty? I mean, I’ll take it!”

With the life she’s lived and all of the knowledge and experience that have come with it, Rudolph is seemingly embracing the privilege of protecting her energy without fear.

“[The] zero-f-cks hormones have kicked in a lot more than they used to,” Rudolph joked.

“I am a polite person, and I care about how I treat other people, I like to be respectful. But at a certain point, you have to stand up for yourself. It took me a long time to get to feeling more comfortable in this space, but I’m in it now.”