The Real Reason Lily Tomlin Never Had Any Kids

Lily Tomlin has spent a career making people laugh with her stand-up comedy and iconic movie and TV roles in gems like "9 to 5," Netflix's "Grace and Frankie," and that one "NCIS" episode you totally forgot she starred in. Unlike many Hollywood stars, she's been in a relationship with the same partner since 1971, ultimately marrying comedy writer Jane Wagner in 2013. Tomlin and Wagner are child-free and happy about it. 

In an interview with Metro Weekly back in 2006, Tomlin shared that, while appearing as a guest on "The Tonight Show" in 1973, she was somewhat forced to admit she didn't want to have children — a statement that wasn't super popular at the time. Host Johnny Carson had asked Tomlin if she was married, which she wasn't, and if she wanted to have any kids. "You could hear the audience stop dead," Tomlin recalled. "Because as a female, even to say you didn't necessarily want to have a child or act out the traditional role of any kind was heavy. And the audience was like — a pin could drop."

She answered the question by saying she didn't have children simply because she wanted to focus on her career instead, even though she liked them. "God only knows what I would have done with them, poor things," she said in the Metro Weekly interview. "I really do like kids, but there wouldn't have been room in my life to raise children. I was so involved with my career and I would have had to give up the career in large part because I could not possibly have shortchanged the child."

Lily Tomlin could have easily afforded children, based on her staggering net worth of $15 million, but that's not how she wanted to spend her money — or her life. In 2015, she told The Guardian that making someone who looked like her would have been special, but motherhood simply wasn't a life goal of hers.

When asked during that same interview if her wife felt a similar way, Tomlin shared some surprising news. She thought Jane Wagner probably didn't share Tomlin's feelings on the matter, but the couple once did consider using Wagner's good-looking nephew as a sperm donor. If they had gone through with that, Tomlin admitted she'd have been the person to go through pregnancy, even though she didn't like the idea, and that she also would have been the one to "get up and fix breakfast for the kids and all that." Looking back on her life, Tomlin also told The Guardian that she was "so glad we didn't have any children," adding that the state of the world wasn't something she wanted to raise a child in whatsoever: "When I think of the world now, I don't want to even deal with having to raise a child."