Jennifer Hudson Reveals Shocking Discovery: Her Father Had 27 Children

“It was my dream to have all of us at this grand Thanksgiving or Christmas table, and we all sit and eat together—that was my goal at 16,” Jennifer Hudson said.

The 42-year-old singer appeared on this week’s finale episode of Your Mama’s Kitchen: Conversations from the Heart of the Home podcast to discuss her family life. When asked about her siblings, Hudson had a surprising story to share.

“Your father had a big personality,” host Michele Norris remarked. “And you went with your siblings and found him at some point, discovering that you had a lot more siblings?”

“Yes, a lot of us. Apparently, he had 27 children,” Hudson revealed.

A shocked Norris noted, “That’s a lot of children,” before the EGOT winner explained that she never met them all, but “that’s what we were always told.” She said that when she found out about them at 16, she wanted to look deeper into her family.

“It was my dream to have all of us at this grand Thanksgiving or Christmas table, and we all sit and eat together—that was my goal at 16,” she reiterated.

Hudson explained that she ended up meeting six or seven of them, along with the siblings she grew up with, Jason and Julia.

“We found quite a few of us,” she said, adding, “And I’m the youngest of all of them.”

Hudson said it was her father’s side of the family that helped unite the siblings she eventually met.

“When my grandma on his side passed, my siblings over there were like, ‘Y’all got a sister that can really sing, you should meet her,’” she revealed. “And eventually we all came together.”

Hudson is the mother to a 14-year-old son, David Daniel Otunga Jr., whom she shares with her ex, David Otunga. Last year, she brought him to the White House for Juneteenth and later spoke about the importance of raising a young Black man in her cover story for Real Simple.

“I want my son to be a part of those things—and his cousins and friends,” she said. “Little David has a really big heart, and he always wants to include them. So I said, ‘I’ll sing, but I have to bring my boys.’”

“And I told the guys, ‘When you all get old and you have children, you’re going to say, ‘I was there for the first Juneteenth.’ And to be able to sing for it—that’s something I will never forget.”

On the podcast, Hudson spoke about wanting her son to grow up around family, explaining, “I love to try to make sure he has the closest thing to him… just making sure he has his cousins’ circle and that base and foundation. That’s part of why I moved back to Chicago, because I wanted him to have the surroundings of his family while growing up.”

“Now we’re here in L.A., and so we make a point to have our Sunday dinners. That’s one thing that’s very important,” she continued. “And then he has cousins that come in and out. One of them is here right now. And so to keep that family connection… so he has that same upbringing or going to see the loved ones I talked to.”

“We have a huge family. People like the fact that y’all are this close and your family is this big. Like, all of us are still very connected,” she added.