Many may know him as Randall Pearson, or more recently Agent Xavier Collins, but to his two boys, Sterling K. Brown will always be dad, first and foremost.
The Paradise actor is a doting dad to two sons, Andrew, 12, and Amaré, eight, who he shares with his wife of almost 20 years, fellow actress Ryan Michelle Bathé.
Ryan, best known for roles in One for the Money, The First Wives Club series, and most recently The Endgame, has been by the This Is Us alum’s side throughout almost the entirety of his career.
The couple met in 1998 when they were freshmen at Stanford University, and both went on to pursue MFAs at New York University. They then eloped in March 2006, before hosting a larger ceremony in June 2007.
And before they even welcomed their first child in 2011, the two had already established what they would be like as parents — though that’s not to say they haven’t broken their own parenting rules before.
Speaking with People last year, Ryan and Sterling, who have a podcast together titled We Don’t Always Agree, the former shared: “A lot of things about parenting we got settled and agreed on before the children came, so whatever big issues we may or may not have had, we had hashed them out.”
© Getty“There were not a lot of surprises in terms of, ‘Oh, this is the kind of parent Sterling is,’ or, ‘This is the kind of parent Ryan is.’ I had no idea she was going to be so lackadaisical. I had no idea he was going to be the fun guy,” she further explained.
One of the things that they agreed on is that despite their successful careers in the spotlight, they wouldn’t pressure the boys into following in their footsteps.
© Getty“There’s this idea I think that both of us agree on, most of the time, is that they’re not to be molded into versions of us. That they kind of are who they are when they come to you,” Sterling said.
© Getty“We’re just trying to shepherd them to become the best version of who they already are,” the doting dad maintained.
© GettyStill, they admitted they haven’t always stuck to that. “Ryan tried to make [our son] into a dancer for a hot second. He’s a very good dancer, a very good dancer,” Sterling recalled, though noted: “And he looked around in ballet class and he’s like, ‘I’m the only dude. I’m out.'”
Ryan herself added: “They put him in a little bow tie for the final performance and they put him in the middle because it was all the girls, and they did all of this little choreography around him and he looked so handsome,” before noting that though he was “so good,” he instead “plays soccer now.”
