Wayne Brady Reveals He Has a Son: 'How Loved He Is!' (Exclusive)

The ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ host, his 21-year-old daughter and the rest of his 'Core Four' share with PEOPLE how they handled the revelation that Brady's ex-girlfriend was expecting his child

As an entertainer who thrives in improvised situations, Wayne Brady is used to surprises. But he couldn’t have been prepared for the curveball of learning his ex-girlfriend was pregnant with his son.

During a recent interview with PEOPLE, Brady, 52, discussed the revelation, which he shared for the first time in the series premiere of his new Freeform reality show Wayne Brady: The Family Remix.

“I was shocked,” he tells PEOPLE exclusively of learning that his ex, Tina, whom he dated off and on during the pandemic, was pregnant in 2022. "I asked the silly question that I think many men since the beginning of time have asked. “’How?’ You know how! So get past it."

Brady received the news that Tina was pregnant several weeks after the family had returned from Brady's grandmother Valerie's funeral in the Virgin Islands. When the baby boy was born, he was named Val Henry.

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Brady is determined for Val to feel loved and valued the way his 21-year-old daughter Maile Brady, whom he shares with ex-wife and best friend Mandie Taketa, 48, felt growing up.

“I never want Val to grow up thinking that he should be ashamed or look back and go, ‘Oh, my dad didn't want me,’ or he was ashamed of me. Because I want him, in his own way, to know that I love him as much as I love Maile, who is of me and that I had a part in creating,” he continues. “So I had to do that work.”

Maile recalls having “mixed feelings” when she heard she would be a sister again, partly because “it came out of left field in a lot of ways.”

“I learned this phrase: ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys,’ and I was like, ‘All right, cool. Have fun with that. I am 21 now. It's not my baby,” she says, adding that this new familial situation is a chance for Brady, Taketa and Jason Fordham, Taketa's partner, to grow. “This is kind of an opportunity for all of us to grow up and see how that dynamic works as individuals.”

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Brady, Maile, Taketa and Fordham, 40, have become a tightly-knit blended family in the years following Brady and Taketa's divorce in 2008. A year later, Taketa started dating Fordham, one of Brady's backup dancers. (Taketa and Fordham now share 2-year-old son Sundance, who is about a year older than Val.) The foursome have become so close, they live eight minutes apart and regularly dine, travel and parent together and call themselves the “Core Four.”

Fordham wants to help Brady with Val however he can. “I'm in it with Sundance, you know what I mean?,” he says. “You go back to the diapers and all that stuff. That's what came to mind. … I'm like, ‘Okay, let's save this stuff. Sundance outgrew it, but little one's on the way.’ And then I start kind of thinking like that. ‘Okay, we got this stroller.’ That kind of thing.”

Related: Wayne Brady Announces All-New Reality Series About His Blended Family: 'You've Never Seen a Family Like Ours'

Although Brady and Tina don’t live near each other, he spends as much time as possible with Val and sees him every day over FaceTime.

“I'm super sweet, because it's the little guy,” Brady says of his parenting style. “It's a different type of parenting than when Maile was born, because [Mandie and I] were together. … It's a completely different form of co-parenting.”

“I'm going to nurture him, and I'm going to let him flower and let him do his thing,” he continues. “He will have boundaries, but he's never going to grow up feeling like he can't talk. To this day, I can recall when I know that I'm not supposed to speak. I can feel the tightness right here when I know that I'm supposed to just sit down and be quiet — and I don't want that for him.”

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Maile, for her part, emphasizes that Val is embraced by the Core Four, and that viewers will see that when they watch Wayne Brady: The Family Remix.

“I'm glad that Tina and Val do have representation on the show, because I think that will snuff out a lot of maybe preconceived notions or misconceptions,” she explains. “I think of how loved he is by the Core Four, and I'm glad that he'll have that as well.”

Wayne Brady: The Family Remix airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on Freeform and the next day on Hulu.

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