Sandra Bullock is opening up about how her children, Louis, 16, and Laila, 12, each reacted to her late partner Bryan Randall’s battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Randall was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease in 2020 and died in August 2023 at age 57.
Bullock, 62, shared on the Monday, August 24, episode of the “SmartLess” podcast that her son and daughter “could see” what was happening. “They’re very, very astute kids,” she said.
“They not only see the physical change, there’s a behavior that changes in all of us,” the Oscar winner said.
“I’m hypervigilant … I became manic in my vigilance,” she said, noting that she was not only looking after Randall but also responsible for hiring nurses to provide him in-home care.
Bullock continued, “When I would bring things up to them, it was when they asked and when I could see them see it and ask them what it is that they want to do in this situation. ‘How do you want to handle what you just saw or where you are here?’”
“Louis handled it very different than Laila,” she said. “About two years before Bryan passed, he saw it was a dynamic that wasn’t healthy for him to be around. So, he’s very evolved, he’s like, ‘You know what, I’m here for you’ … but he chose to just sort of be there and support and help me on the things that were easy [for him]. But he smartly disengaged himself and said, ‘This is a safer space for me to sit,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely, you go. I got this.’”
Laila, on the other hand, “was more bonded until about six months” before Randall’s death, said the Practical Magic 2 star. “And then she says, ‘Can you please say no when they call me over to go visit?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely, but if you do want to go visit, I will come with you and I will be right there and if you tap out, I’m right there.’”
Bullock shared that she was “able to wall off a whole section” of her house with a different entrance for Randall and his care team because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also made it easier for her kids to have space from the situation.
The actress also revealed that Randall asked her not to share his diagnosis before his death, which “isolated me in the process.”
“My sister [Gesine Bullock-Prado] was the only one who knew for a while,” Bullock said. “At first I go, ‘Oh, I can handle that. I can be quiet.’”
“I think where he was in his journey, both physically and mentally, I started grieving Bryan four years before he passed,” she said of how she handled Randall’s diagnosis. “There was something that had shifted.”
“My person left a lot earlier than the body left,” she added. “I don’t think I ever dealt with that until after he passed, because you’re just on this treadmill.”
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