Anderson Cooper Gets Emotional Talking About His Father, Brother’s Deaths: ‘I Shut Down’

Anderson Cooper got emotional while talking about the deaths of his father and brother with friend Stephen Colbert.

“Grief can feel so lonely,” Cooper, 58, said during the Wednesday, October 15, episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “I didn’t allow myself to grieve as a kid.”

Cooper’s father, Wyatt Cooper, died after suffering a heart attack when the journalist was just 10 years old. His brother, Carter Cooper, died by suicide a decade later in 1988.

“I shut down,” he continued. “I have lived for 40 years without allowing myself to feel the pain of the grief … By not allowing myself to feel the pain of it, I also didn’t allow myself to ever feel joy. True joy. Because you can’t have one without the other.”

Cooper — who lost his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, in 2019 — launched a podcast, All There Is with Anderson Cooper, where he and guests discuss “their experiences with grief.”

“I just think grief can feel so lonely. It certainly has for me, but I’ve learned a lot from you, talking to you about it,” Copper told Colbert. “And the idea that, while grief can feel so lonely, the things I’ve learned that help are talking about it and listening to the experience of others who have gone through it, like you, and listening to others has changed my life. It has saved my life in many ways, and it’s given me a new life, and I’m so grateful.”