Anderson Cooper has reflected on a "bats**t crazy" idea his late mother Gloria Vanderbilt once had.
During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday, the journalist, 56, admitted that Gloria offered to be his surrogate at the age of 85, after Anderson expressed interest in wanting a family.
"This is like eight years before I decided to have a child," he told Howard. "But my mum really wanted me to have a kid, and she called me up one time and she was like, 'Honey, there's something I really need to talk to you about.'"
The broadcaster continued, "She was like, 'Well, the most amazing thing happened. I went to the gynecologist the other day,' - preface this, is that my mom was 85 at the time - 'and she said the most amazing thing, she told me I could still bear a child."
Anderson explained that his mother suggested she could carry a child for him.
"Mum, I love you," the CNN reporter recalled telling Gloria. "But even for you this is bats**t crazy."
Gloria died in 2019 at the age of 95.
Anderson and his former partner Benjamin Maisani went on to welcome two children via surrogate.
Their eldest son, Wyatt, was born in 2020. They welcomed their second baby boy Sebastian, 19 months, in 2022.
