All There Is with Anderson Cooper - Gavin Newsom

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks with Anderson about growing up the child of divorced parents whose pasts were rarely talked about. Newsom witnessed his mom's death by doctor-assisted suicide and says it's only now that he has come to terms with what happened and the impact it had on him. This and other episodes of All There Is are available at cnn.com/allthereis or wherever you get podcasts. Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Chuck Hadad, Grace Walker, Emily Williams, Madeleine Thompson Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to all there is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. My guest today is a politician, but we aren't talking politics. Gavin Newsom is the governor of California. In 2002, his mom, Tessa, left him a voicemail. Gavin, if you want to see me, she said, you should probably do so before Thursday because that's going to be my last day on Earth. She'd been battling breast cancer for four years and had decided to die by doctor-assisted suicide, which was illegal in California. Newsom was by his mom's bedside when she died. He's written a book about his life called Young Man in a Hurry, a memoir of Discovery. I spoke to him last week.

You had a really interesting childhood and a really strange bifurcated existence, a lot of different race. Yeah, my father just took off, was sort of broken by two campaigns for local office. He ran for two offices back-to-back, lost, spent the money he had. He said he had basically a nervous brain. breakdown later. But the extent to which like your dad and your mom did not talk about stuff with you. Never. And I didn't even know why they got divorced. I never knew that story about my dad until I discovered some audio recordings that were done that my dad did near the end of his life with other family members.

And I listen to them. And I'm like, this explains everything. Not only does it explain the thing that ever talked about, mom and dad never talked about the reason they divorced, but also explained why my mom was so aggressively insistent that I not get into politics. And she never expressed why. She just constantly pushed me away from politics. And to understand then the origin story of their breakup and the fact that my mom had to become an adult very quickly with two young kids, she came from no wealth, no money, just hustled to make ends meet.

My father was distant in every way financially and otherwise. It explains so much of why I have. doubts, anxieties, fear, resentment, anger, and it allowed me just to let it go and now to understand more deeply and, you know, and frankly apologize for many of those emotions and those aspersions that frankly I cast against them when I was growing up. There's a couple of parallels that I found really interesting. I grew up not talking about anything. I also had dyslexia. I'm not sure what my diagnosis was. I used to go see a doctor. it was spotted early unlike with you, and I was told about it unlike with you. But it,

I don't think mine was as bad as you. Now, there's a kid in the back of the classroom, literally soaking hands, still happens a lot, sweaty under the armpits, a heart pounding, shy beyond words, and felt like I was dumb and actually knew I was dumb because it just wasn't smart than anyone else, spelling bees, the whole thing. There's a moment when your mom is trying to help you read and struggling with it, can't really do it. She closes the book, and she says to you, it's okay to be average gap. The worst words of, I mean, I'll tell you,

if I look at my life, that may have been the most piercing thing. I resented her for years and years. For that long time. Yeah. You don't want to say that to your kid. And I struggle with that, and I'm not, I kid you not,

only through the process of writing this book, did I forgive her? Because now as a parent myself with four young kids struggling and just, like, I get the exhaustion. And it's what she was saying, and I really believe she was saying, it's just, just be yourself. You don't have to be someone else. It's okay. Let it go. And I didn't. And it was a chip on my shoulder. And I don't think it's there like it was before. And, you know, look, I don't want to overstate. I want to paint an overly negative picture. But she had her, she had, She had secrets. She had all these struggles. I never, she never revealed them. I just, I lacked the curiosity to really push her on it and didn't want to engage. When she was a kid, her father, my grandfather,

was drunk, which was a daily occurrence, and had a gun and put the two girls, my mom and her twin, up against the mantle of the fireplace, and said he was going to kill him, put a gun right to their head until my grandmother, Jean came in and called. calmly put him down, and then he passed out. She never told me that. I learned about that. I didn't know about my grandfather's suicide. I didn't know what shaped his drinking.

I didn't know what shaped his suicide. He had been a prison of war, the Japanese in World War II. He ended up shooting himself in his bed. Yeah, and how that must have shaped my mom. And we never talked about that. The first few years of her life, she was so traumatized in that house. It was a house of horror, as they described it, and later learned. And she didn't even talk for years, quite literally, didn't talk.

And your mom and her identity twin had their own kind of language. And it was sort of this gibberish. She would speak to Annie, and Annie would be the one that sort of translate her to the real world. See, all those things I wish I knew because then I would have known my mom. And then I would have known myself better. She, like her father, like a lot of members of the family, I mean, she, the sadness for her was she would get home and open that jug. of Safeway white wine.

So she drank, too. Yeah, and it was, she wasn't, she drank, but in a different way. It was just, it was almost medicinal. It was just to, own out, and she'd wake up at 4.35 in the morning. Seven days a week was at work. I mean, I, I mean, she, when people talk about three jobs, three jobs are quite literally the jobs on the weekend, not just the two jobs. She was like a waitress one day, other jobs.

Ramona's restaurant, part-time bookkeeper. She worked for aid to adoption of special kids that have bought family, intellectual and physical disabilities. You wrote in the book, she said, I was trying to solve the riddle of my identity, the question put there by my learning disability in the vastly different worlds that she and my father had presented to me

as I grew up trying to grasp which of these worlds have either suited me best. She had worried about the persona I was constructing to cover up what she considered a crack at my core. If my remaking was skim plaster, she feared it would crumble, it would not hold me into adulthood.

What was the crack at your core? Well, I just, this young man in a hurry. I was just seeking something, validation, external affirmation. I was just hustling. And I didn't take time to pause. I didn't take time to gauge reflect on my mother. Advanced breast cancer that had gone into remission the first time. And it came back and I frankly took it for granted because I'm like, oh, she'll be okay. You wrote in the book. You said my way of dealing with her illness was to spend even more hours at work. Yeah, that's what I was doing. You ran from it. Yeah, of course I ran from it.

I was just totally fully absorbed by myself. I'm running a few businesses. I'd open a wine store at a college, a restaurant, was involved in some other businesses. It was on the county board of supervisors. And, you know, I'm so blessed to have an amazing rock star sister, and she absorbed the emotional side of all of it. And so I felt like, okay, that's being taken care of.

My sister's got this. And so I'm just going to try to take care of what I can take care of. Just go, just grind. I was very distant from her. And she leaves me a voicemail. And she says, hello, That's your mom. Next week, if you're interested, I will be my last day of life. And if you want, you should stop by. And I remember calling my sister right away and say,

well, what the hell is going on? She's like, what the hell's wrong with you? Why haven't even paying attention? Mom's suffering and she's doing this assisted suicide. Your mom literally left you a voicemail saying Thursday will be my last day on Earth. I have it. I have it on a small little, you know, went to back to Walgreens, a little tape recorder with the old tapes. and I kept it and I don't know why I kept it. I mean, it was such a sad and pathetic thing

that she felt she needed to do that to leave me a voicemail because otherwise I wasn't going to return her call or wasn't around and sort of the finality of it. And again, you know, you talk about psychology and pattern interrupts,

that was her just scratching the record player. Get out of your routine man. Paying attention to me. Wake up, grow up. So that was kind of the plaster I put a mask on and my face was growing into it.

I was becoming someone that I'm not, someone I didn't necessarily like, someone that was unworthy of being her son. And I started to spend a little more time with her, and I didn't realize the pain she was in, just the physical, excruciating pain she was in, and, you know, try to boil a hard-boiled eggs. She couldn't eat, and it was just, you know, cancars sores in her throat and the cancer treatments, and the body had significantly deteriorated. And so it made me deeply understand.

And boy, I'll tell you, deeply revere the doctor who was willing to do this. It was illegal at the time. That last few hours, friends and family came over in her apartment. Everyone, I came a little late. They had all said their goodbye. She's in her bedroom preparing for the assisted suicide. And the last two she wanted to be with were my sister and I. When you came in, she had a photo of you and your sister on her chest.

She said my works of art. Works of art. Yeah. And so you're there. It's emotional. You don't know what you're... I never experiencing anything like this. And two of us were in there looking through old photographs, sort of 1970s, old pictures.

And she was describing the moment and talking about, you know, her relationship to that moment. And she had... I remember there's a bottle of pills. And my only job was the doctor said, would you have her take these 20 minutes before whatever time the doctor was coming? And so that was my job. And I just remember, and I remember saying, Mom, you need to take these two pills, which was going to prepare for the actual cocktail. And in the process of those 20 or 30 minutes we're talking, you could tell she was just sort of getting looser and more relaxed. And my sister was getting more anxious, more.

And we're holding both her hands on both sides of the bed. As she's looking through and the two of us trying to show her pictures and the stories, doctor comes in and my sister just, you know, then that it's, real. And he does what he does. And she's crying. I'm crying. So the doctor administered the whatever the cocktail was. The cocktail. And he beautifully, what a, like an angel. I mean, he, an angel. He passed away years ago. I never got a chance to thank him as well. I risked everything. Talk about, you know, put his license on the line. And just so calmly. And, you know, said goodbye. And when he left, my sister really started to break down.

And she looked at me and I said, you could go. I remember, he said, you could go. And she said, thank you. I just left. And I was there. And just for those last minutes and those breasts, there was nothing, this is not, nothing romantic about this. I mean, it was like violent, the breasts.

And you're like, Jesus, what am I doing here? And holding her hand. And then this, this. stillness, but stiffness. And I just put my head on her stomach that it distended and just bawling, same to her muttering to her for 20 minutes of things. I didn't have the guts to say 20 minutes before, feeling like, you know, it was like the talk about the mask, like grow up, man.

It was just that moment. And, you know, I had a resentment for years about that too. resentment that she asked you to be there. Yeah, I just, again, through the lens of this sort of shitty son that was about me, but it wasn't about me, right? But I was like, who does this? Who would, like, invite someone in to see this, the experience? Like, I saw the trauma of my sister.

I'm like, she's not, we've struggled with this. Like, should we've done this together? But I kid you and I, once again, this. I mean, this is why everyone should journal and write. I didn't know. I have never done anything like this. In the process of writing this, I also, back to, it's okay to be average, I was, holding her hand.

She's still, I'm still holding her hand. Her breath, that's my breath. It's the last breath. And I'm like, oh, God, what a gift. What a gift. Like, how blessed am I? Thank you. But she's not around for me to say it.

And so, you know, what I have to do is you have to be a better husband and, and, I'm bothered to my own kids and make up for all of that. But that was hard. You view it as a gift now that too bad. Yeah. Oh, I do. I didn't. I really feel the breath.

I feel there's this thing, just this notion of this letting go. It's powerful. I didn't, I've never had the feeling of understanding that, of a breath. I feel for 57 years, like just all wound up. And just accepting, just accepting, things I can't control, just accepting them. Things I can, taking account and responsibility to be better and more. More of my conversation with California Governor Gavin Newsom in just a moment. Welcome back to my conversation with Governor Gavin Newsom.

Do you feel grief? I feel... Because not everyone does or it has different meanings for different people. Yeah, it's really, it's such a basic question, isn't it? It's interesting. Just as you pose it, I feel loss. I feel regret

I feel inadequate just inadequate I feel grace humility I feel I guess human

do you miss her oh God Jesus I mean I mean I Anderson in the book

I talk about I had the one speech I have to read and periodically we'll do a teleprompter thing

was with in my inaugural speech, when I got elected governor and my little two-year-old or three, whatever he was at the time, Dutch, with his pacifier, you know, right out of his central casting kid. All of us had those moments with our kids and ran up on stage as I'm speaking, and I'm terrified to look off the teleproster

because I'm just, there's no way I'll get back on the script. And everyone's staring at the kid running on the stage. My wife tried to grab him and he's running away and he eventually just lands on my leg and I'm in the middle of the speech and I'm just staring there. and I just instinctually lifted him up and he puts his photos there

just puts his head right in my you know just like and he starts falling asleep and I'm reading the speech and I'm like and I swear to you like oh where's my mom to see this because that is someone she would have been proud of that moment

that's what she wanted me I'm sorry man Jesus. Let's take a look at that moment, actually. Oh, gosh. Now more than ever, we Californians, now how much a house matters and children matter. No. Because so many of our neighbors have lost theirs.

We will support parents. They need support. Trust me. So that they can give their kids. the love and care that they need. My biggest fear, you know, my wife's biggest fear was, you know, what kind of dad are you going to be? You're going to be your father?

Or are you going to be, you know, she didn't know. Well, that was actually going to be a question of mine, how do you break that cycle? Yeah. I think it just happens. It's like you're struck by lightning. And I didn't, you know, I was, I remember just the birth of my, my oldest who just turned 16, which is incredible. And it felt like lightning when she was swaddled.

And I was like, oh, oh, thank God. Like, I'll tell you the coolest thing for me. Like, actually. And if you have a 14-year-old boy, you can appreciate this. Like, he leaves, and I'm going to embarrass him now. But when he leaves out, it's like, love you, love you, 14. And I'm like, man, that's called at winning. Like, I'm like, that's the same boy that texted me saying,

Dad, did I hear you might run for president? He goes, you can't do that. We're still too young and we need you around. Ha. Life. I now, I have a 4-year-old and an almost 6-year-old, and I'm trying to do all the things which don't come naturally, which is to talk about myself to them and show my own sadness or my own joy or whatever it is. I try to say I love you every time I talk to them, and sometimes I fall short. and it's the greatest thing in the world

because my dad can never do that. Your dad, even on his deathbed, a home attendant, said to him, tell your son you love him, and he didn't. It was right after I got elected, it was the night of my election after you may have announced,

literally Anderson, you may have announced the results of the California governor's race. I'm sitting there with my father, he's in his wheelchair. It's a miracle he lived to see it. He was keeping himself alive to see.

elected. He was hugely proud. It was everything. And that's, and she... It was everything he wanted to be. Everything he wanted to be. And this was like, come on. California governor. His mayor was extraordinary to him, but governor, this is ridiculous. And then she says, you must be so proud, Bill and everyone's egging him on.

And he does this Gleeson thing. Oh, you know, the old Irish thing. He's just, joy to be, you know, some, you know, thing. A little, or quotes Yates or something. And when in doubt, he always quoted Yates. And it couldn't say it, but I never doubted he did. Never doubted he did, because he told all his friends. And they always told me.

They said, I was with your father last night. He's so proud of you watched this. I'm like, come on, man, tell me. So I never felt that distance in that respect. But I also never felt that direct connection. I listened to a podcast you did with David Axelrod a long time together. Oh, gosh, yeah. You were saying that your dad, as you grew up more athletic, your dad gravitated more toward you

than he had previously. No, now I'm interesting. Right, yeah. I'm sorry to say it like that. I was all of a sudden. Yeah. But all of a sudden, I was the captain of my basketball team, and all of a sudden we're in the playoffs.

All of a sudden, I'm leading score on the team, and all of a sudden I'm hitting 400 baseball and getting some college recruits, and all of a sudden now he's showing up with his friends because they're friends like, hey, Bill, congrats. But it was wonderful. Because I had them back. bringing friends to see you play.

Yeah, and look up there. I'm like, oh my God, dad's there. And you're just, you're performing for him, man. You're diving now. You're not just going the ball. You're diving for the ball. And you're dying at the end of the day for the thing that you really were longing for. And that is going to take you to dinner.

And you're going to have dinner with dad. He would have dinner with you, but he would bring, it was with friends. Never one-on-one. I don't think I've ever had one-on-one dinner with my dad. He couldn't be alone with you. Yeah. He never really opened up to you. He was charmed.

and could tell a great story, but if you were looking for truths of who he was or his past or you weren't going to get that. We're going to get it. And he came from a very strict household, old Irish Catholic family and very religious. And so certain things were just not discussed at all. And he certainly passed that down. But boy, was he a great storyteller. What a wonderful friend.

And what an extraordinary father he became. And he's my sense of idealism. He's the spirit. He's the pride I have in public service. And you combine that with my mom's grit and hard work and dedication, this blend. But yeah, he became such an extraordinary example to me. But again, he didn't raise us. Did you have anybody who you confided in when you were kid?

You couldn't really talk to your dad, couldn't really talk to your mom. No. I developed a very strong intent. internal conversation in my head and a very voice in my head, which may be a psychopath, I'm not sure, but is an unreliable narrator at best. But yeah, I didn't really have anybody I ever talked to. No, I did the same thing on the basketball court in the backyard for hours and hours and hours and hours. playing baseball, just throwing the ball against the harbor wall, and then throwing the ball in the air,

and it's the bottom of the ninth, and I'm on center feet, just those narratives that would shape. And then, candidly, try and be like Remington Steel and Pierce Brosnan, and literally furrowed bow, which I wish I would get rid of now, that I think I started creating when I was in high school,

and literally just looking around and trying to see who I could become, who can I absorb. And Pierce Brosnan, that was, Remington Steel is the model. Come on. See, for me, it was T.E. Lawrence or Colonel Kurtz. So yours is better. Sorry, much better.

Much better. Mine's been more enduring as well. Yeah, mine were like psychopats. But I think you may have discovered this with your learning differences. You tend to overcompensate in other ways. And one of the overcompensations is the gift. It's the superpower. And that is the ability to absorb and read the room.

You recognize that pain in other people. and you're more sensitive to that. And you can absorb that. And I just look, I think that's, at the end of the day, it's a hell of a lot healthier than those that have no shame, no empathy, or those that assert that empathy is somehow a destroying Western civilization. This one infamous individual is done. It's not about aggression.

It's about empathy, caring, and collaboration. And that's what strength looks like. And, you know, I found that strength in my parents, and I did. And for all their imperfections, for my imperfections, those are the gifts they gave me. Gavin Newsom, thank you so much. It's great to be with you. Gavin Newsom's book, Young Man in a Hurry, A Memoir of Discovery, is out now. This week, we're bringing you an extra podcast episode.

This Thursday, you can hear my conversation with Robert Irwin. His dad, Steve Irwin, who was a conservationist and TV star, best known as the crocodile hunter, was killed when Robert was just two years old. Steve was shooting a documentary underwater when he was killed. kill by a stingray. Robert Irwin has followed in his dad's footsteps as a conservationist. You may also know him from dancing with the stars. I'm a very sentimental person and my dad was like, he's kind of like Indiana Jones, right? When you walked into his office, it was like a museum. I mean, he's got like Maasai spears on the wall and he's got like swords from like he, like,

He, like, he's exactly what you would imagine his office to be. Oh, literally his office was like Indiana Jones. And I remember I would often, you know, just walk in and everything was left pristine exactly the same, right? Nothing was touched. And sometimes I would just walk in and I felt like I was in like, I don't know, like sacred ground, don't touch anything, don't breathe on anything. And I would kind of just look just, just on my own to just sort of get, I don't know, feel him

again. And then one day I went, you know what? I don't think he's gonna mind. So I started taking stuff. I went in and there's all of his shirts on a rack that he used to wear all his car key shirts. I looked at that and I went, I wonder if that fits me. So I popped it in the wash, I put it on and I'm like, yep, that fits. And I'm like, great, I'm gonna start wearing his shirts.

He had a watch on the table that was sitting there, always told the same time. And I went, I'm gonna get that thing working again and got it working and started wearing it. And now it's like this really powerful thing. It's like almost like that was, that was like this stepping off point to be like, he's this almost like untouchable part of my life that is like held stale in time. But then I kind of went, no, no, no, no, I can embrace that. I can bring that into my world. So that was kind of really, that was really powerful. That's really awesome.

It was, yeah, and then I, do you know what I'm, you know what I mean? Yeah, and it also gives new life to these things which become, you know, you know, you know, draped in memory and maybe sadness and, you know, are frozen in time, as you say, and it brings them alive again. Brings them alive again. It's a great conversation and it'll be available Thursday, March 5th at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can watch it on CNN.com slash all there is, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. Then next week, on Thursday, March 12th, join me at 9.15 p.m. Eastern from my live streaming show,

All There Is Live. If you haven't seen it, you can catch an old episode on CNN.com slash all there is right now. And if you miss the live stream, it'll be posted the following day on that website for a week. Thanks so much for listening. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone. Do you ever find yourself lying in bed with your thoughts racing and your brain just won't turn off? That's the kind of thing that Catherine Nicolay helps with on her podcast. Nothing much happens.

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rest their nervous systems, and finally get the sleep that they need. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes every Monday and Thursday.