Gabrielle Union is getting real about surrogacy.
The 52-year-old actress and mother opened up about the complexity of surrogacy while discussing her motherhood journey in a recent profile for Marie Claire magazine’s first-ever motherhood issue.
When the “Perfect Find” star was ready to expand her family with her husband, former NBA player Dwyane Wade, she ultimately had to go the surrogacy route to conceive her six-year-old daughter, Kaavia.
“For me, it felt like failure,” she said. “My body failed. It just felt like such a f— public humiliation. Surrogacy felt like a cuckold; watching somebody do something I can’t do. To be there for somebody else succeeding where I failed—it is a mind f— for people who have had my journey and who feel similarly. When it’s never been your reality, I get the urge to judge and cast aspersions because we all want whatever route we took to be the “right” way.”
Union, who has one biological child with Wade and is stepmother to his other three children from previous relationships, said she’s still not quite over the emotional toll of the experience.
“I’ll never have peace with it, ever,” the “Being Mary Jane” alum admitted. “And that’s not a what-anybody-has-to-say thing; that’s just—my yearning has never dissipated. I was so ready for my surprise, but all the prayers that didn’t get answered in the way that I thought made me more conscientious that my child is here.”
She mused, “Did I want the public applause and attention that come with being a public pregnant person? Because your baby is here. Your child is here. Healthy. Amazing.”
Regardless, the actress said she is “grateful” to her surrogate.
“I’m very grateful to our gestational caregiver, though. It’s just one of those things where it’s such a personal journey that I may never know full peace with the coulda, woulda, shouldas,” she noted.
She also said people can be judgmental of her less-than-rosy feelings on the topic.
“Because it’s different and because every single person’s surrogacy journey is different,” she said. “It’s like any time there’s any kind of variance in the experience, it’s, ‘See, I told you. You shouldn’t explore this option to expand your family.’”
Union and Wade’s blended family includes their daughter Kaavia; two children Wade shares with ex-wife Siovaughn Funches, Zaire, 23, and Zaya, 17, and a son he shares with Aja Metoyer, Xavier, 11. Wade is also the legal guardian of his nephew, Dahveon Morris, 21, and Union’s little sister has been living with the family for the last five years.
The busy jet-setting actress who just appeared alongside her husband on the 2025 Met Gala’s blue carpet in New York on Monday has, over the years, credited a very locked-in village for how she and Wade make it all work.
While speaking to Scary Mommy in 202, Union said, “I depend heavy, heavy, heavy on our village: my sisters, my niece, my mom, my husband’s mom. My mom at 60 adopted three children. They’re other family members, but they’re now my siblings/cousins, we call them the Unions 2.0. It’s all hands on deck.”
In the Marie Claire profile, she reiterated her thoughts around her village.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be equipped to do this on our own. You know what I mean?” she said.
