You won’t catch Kaley Cuoco wearing a “MAMA BEAR” shirt anytime soon. While Cuoco loves being a mom and obviously loves her daughter Matilda, she hates when other people call her “mama.” Based on her comments, it seems as though she feels like it’s almost like you lose your own identity and are now just someone’s “mom” once you have a baby. And many moms can definitely relate to that.
On a recent episode on Conan O’Brien’s “Needs a Friend” podcast, she shared with the late-night talk show host that she cannot stand when other people call her “mama.”
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“What I hate is how everyone now is like, ‘Hey, mama!’ What is that? I had a call on the way here and she was like, ‘How’s mom life?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s the same as it was 10-and-a-half months ago,’”Cuoco said.
Cuoco even went as far as to tell her assistant to call a meeting on the set of a recent acting job, asking people to stop calling her “mama.”
She bristled in the interview when referencing a time when someone said to her “Looking good, mama!”
“I get this visceral, angry reaction. Like, ‘Hey, mama, you’re looking so good.’ I’m like, ‘What did I look like before?’” Cuoco told O’Brien. She said it’s like once people find out you had a baby, you’re suddenly “mama” to everyone.
“If they know you have a baby, then all of a sudden you’re ‘mama’ and you look good. But it’s different from just normal looking good,” Cuoco said.
“I started to really resent everybody,” she said. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”
All that is to say, even though she hates being called mama by other people, she does indeed still love motherhood. In an interview on TODAY, which she recorded from her home, she said being a mom was “so awesome” and she never thought this would be something that would happen to her.
In her most recent Instagram post about her interview with O’Brien, she had some other “mamas” in the comments showing solidarity and agreement with her disdain for the name. “Kaley Cuoco is pure delight,” one fan shared. “I love love love how real she is about being a new mom—between the story she shared on Kimmel about letting Matilda watch Succession to the dislike of ‘hey mama,’ she is just making me smile and laugh so much.”