Jason Bateman is copping heat online after a seriously awkward exchange with Charli xcx on this week’s episode of his SmartLess podcast — the kind of moment that makes you instinctively lower the volume and stare at your phone in second-hand embarrassment.
The brat singer joined Bateman and : co-hosts Sean Hayes (aka Jack from Will & Grace) and Will Arnett (aka Gob from Arrested Development) to chat about her new A24 film The Moment. Everything was going fine until Bateman decided to bring up the one topic that should never come up uninvited in a celebrity interview: children.
After Charli mentioned growing up as an only child, Bateman asked, “Would you love to have more than one kid, or would you like to have a kid that has the same experience as you?”
Cue Charli, calmly responding: “I actually don’t really want to have kids.”
Rather than letting that be the end of it, Bateman forged boldly/foolishly ahead with, “My wife did not want to have kids. And she said once we started going out, she was like, ‘Okay, I think I can have a kid with this guy’. So you might find somebody.”
Charli, bless her, simply replied: “Well, I’m married.”
Bateman laughed awkwardly, admitting, “I gotta read a newspaper one of these days”, before joking, “Your next husband, you’re gonna want kids”.
As the conversation went on, Charli did say that her stance on becoming a mother “could change”, but it’s definitely not where she’s at right now.
“I love the fantasy of having a child like naming it — it sounds so fun — but I’m like, that is exactly assigned to me as to why I should not have one, the fact that [naming it] feels like the coolest part about it,” she said.
The clip quickly made its way to social media, where people labelled the exchange “cringe” and “aggressively heteronormative”.
One X user summed up the mood perfectly: “Incredible rough listening experience… he’s like ‘maybe you just need to find the right guy’ and she’s like ‘I’m married’ and then silence.”
Over on Reddit, one listener called Bateman’s comments “disrespectful”, while another pointed out that “you don’t have to be a brat scholar to know you probably shouldn’t grill a woman in her 30s about whether she wants kids”.
Another added: “We are more than vessels, Jason.”
Some fans gave Bateman a partial pass by citing the SmartLess format — only one co-host knows the guest in advance, meaning the others have zero prep time. One user said, “Don’t love the whole kids thing take in general, but the thing about SmartLess is they don’t know who the other person has picked as their guest.” But others argued that it’s no excuse for asking “any woman at all” such a personal question.
Meanwhile, TikToker Mary Steven unpacked why the exchange hit such a nerve for so many people. In her viral video, she said:
“Despite what a woman tells you, there are still people who believe that women innately will always want children… I do have to wonder, like, what is so crazy about the concept of someone not wanting a child? In this current day and age? In this world? You want me to bring another kid in?”
It’s a sentiment that clearly hit a lot of listeners, especially those tired of the assumption that all women will eventually “change their mind”.
Even Sean Hayes (who co-hosts the show) quietly admitted he also doesn’t want kids, telling Charli, “I’d rather regret not having kids than have them and regret it later”. Which, fair.
The irony, of course, is that Charli’s entire brat era has literally included songs about questioning motherhood — namely the track “I think about it all the time”, which centres on whether she should or shouldn’t have kids. So yeah, Bateman really could’ve used that newspaper he mentioned and there’s probably a brat thinkpiece or two in there waiting for him too.
Lead image: Getty / Armchair Expert / X
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