How Barry Keoghan Feels About Rumors He's An Absent Father To Son Brando

Barry Keoghan has a tragic history, but he would like to put rumors that he's repeating past mistakes to rest. "I'm not an absent father," he said in an appearance on "The Louis Theroux Podcast." Keoghan spoke about the online discourse and how quick people were to label him as a deadbeat. "There's a lot online. If I didn't have tough skin or the strength, I wouldn't be sitting here. Of course, it's going to affect me being a father when I had no blueprint to take from. People just read that [as] laziness and go, 'Oh, that's no excuse to be an absent father.'"

This seemingly stems from a September 2024 interview Keoghan gave to Entertainment Weekly. "I'll just say this — I didn't have a father figure growing up, so even my relationship with my son isn't quite of the normal father-son relationship," he told the outlet while promoting his film "Bird," which is centered around a girl and her strained relationship with her less-than-stellar father, portrayed by Keoghan. He pulled from his own relationship with his father for his character in "Bird."

"I don't have that figure to draw experience from and to base it on. Love, you don't need anything to draw from, love is pure, and so I'm not on about that, but I'm on about little stuff like teaching your son this or teaching your daughter that." People zeroed in on Barry Keoghan's possible family drama and quickly jumped on the celeb parent-shaming bandwagon. 

Barry Keoghan is very protective of his son and doesn't share much about him on social media. "People love to use my son as ammunition or whatever, and it kind of leads me to stop [posting about him.] The more attention I've gotten lately and the more in the public I've become, the less I've posted about my child, because I don't think it's fair to put my child online," he told Theroux.

Unfortunately, people perceived the lack of posts about his son as even more indication of Keoghan not being a part of his life. "Because I reigned that in, people draw a narrative and go, 'Absent father, sh*t, deadbeat dad,' and more disgusting things I wouldn't even repeat. Just the audacity of some people, man, it sickens me. It makes me furious," he continued.

If anyone still has lingering doubts about Keoghan's chops as a father, they just need to turn to his 2024 interview with Vanity Fair. "[Fatherhood is] a new territory for me, and I want to be the best person for him. It's a very important thing for me — for him to be able to grow up and be proud of his daddy, and to lean on his daddy. And if he has questions or anything, I'm always there for him," he said. "His smile breaks my heart. When he makes eye contact with you, you just melt."