Maria Shriver reached out to buoy up son-in-law Chris Pratt after the internet dragged the actor over what many deemed a cringe-worthy Instagram about his kids.
“Guys. For real. Look how she’s looking at me!” Pratt gushed on Instagram last week, next to a photo of himself and his current wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, looking up at him adoringly. “I mean. Find you somebody that looks at you like that!! You know!? We met in church. She’s given me an amazing life, a gorgeous healthy daughter, she chews so loudly that sometimes i put in my ear buds to drown it out, but that’s love!”
The trouble for many fans was the matter of Pratt’s first wife, Anna Faris. They had a son together nine years ago who was born two months prematurely, was hemorrhaging in the brain, and doctors told the pair to prepare for “raising a special-needs child,” as Buzzfeed reported. The two were married from 2009 to 2018, and Pratt married Schwarzenegger in June 2019.
Multiple surgeries later, Jack is left with just a few minor vision problems and a heart malformation, albeit not life-threatening.
Pratt has received much blowback from Faris fans who felt that the gratitude he expressed about his 1-year-old daughter was insensitive at best and throwing shade at his first family, at worst. They excoriated him for dissing his ex and their son, and support for Faris ran strong enough for her to trend on Twitter.
Pratt, known for “Jurassic World” and as a Marvel hero in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” then posted an Instagram story saying he’d gone to bed “really kind of upset and depressed” amid the social media frenzy, though he didn’t allude to it directly, as “Today” noted. He added that he’d consoled himself with exercise and Christian music.
That’s when Shriver, his mother-in-law, chimed in.
“I want to remind you today what a good man you are,” she wrote in a comment on the gushy Instagram post on Saturday, Nov. 7. “What a great father you are to Jack and Lyla, what a great husband you are to Katherine, what a great son in law you are to me, and what a great sense of humor you have!!”
Shriver wasn’t done, offering words of encouragement to counteract the internet’s negative mojo.
“I love you Chris,” Shriver continued. “Keep being your wonderful self. Rise above the noise.”
