Wynonna Judd reveals 'devastated' reaction when mother Naomi confessed who her real dad was
Naomi and Wynonna shot to fame as a singing double-act, The Judds, but shared a complicated personal relationship through their stormy lives until Naomi's shocking gunshot suicide in 2022 at the age of 76.
Now Wynonna, 60, is shedding light on the dark corners of their equation in the new Lifetime docuseries The Judd Family: Truth Be Told.
She recalled that for the first three decades of her life, she believed her real father was Naomi's first husband Michael Ciminella, who married Naomi when she was 17 years old and pregnant with Wynonna.
Only when Wynonna was 30 years old and had been famous for over a decade did Naomi finally tell her the truth - her father was another man called Charlie Jordan.
Charlie and Wynonna never met face to face before he died in 2000 at the age of just 56, leaving behind a trailer filled with posters of The Judds, via TooFab.
The initial story that Naomi told Wynonna about Charlie was: 'I was 16 and I was a virgin, I was home alone and [Charlie] came over and took advantage of me.'
However that version of events ultimately unraveled as Wynonna began to pull harder at the threads, uncovering the true history of her parentage.
Apparently Naomi was in love with Charlie but there 'was all this pressure and everybody kinda freaked out, and he went off to join the Army,' Wynonna said.
'Look, I understand it, but I was really angry with her about it. I was so devastated that I thought there was a part of me that's missing. The glass is half empty,' she shared.
'Learning about my birth father, I feel more like him than I do my mother in certain areas. And I think Mom was terrified of that half of me because she couldn't control it. She couldn't bring it in and train it. That's why Mom was very hard on me.'
With Charlie away in the military, Naomi, 17 and pregnant with his baby, went off and married another man Michael Ciminella.
Michael and Naomi began trying to raise Wynonna and then also welcomed a biological daughter of their own together, film actress Ashley Judd.
However there was always a distance between Michael and Wynonna, who has now said: 'I knew that Michael didn't like me and Mom didn't really love him.'
Naomi and Wynonna became music stars when the latter was just 18 and amassed a huge fanbase - one that included Charlie, who watched quietly from afar.
'My understanding is that Charlie knew about me and that he always felt like he couldn't do anything about it. I guess he didn't feel he was worthy or whatever, like: "Wynonna's got this life and I can't just show up in it,"' said Wynonna.
'And for a while, I wasn't ready to go meet him. What if he's a jerk? What if we don't make a connection?. What if, what if, what if? Fear, fear, fear. But when I finally decided to, it was too late,' the Why Not Me? songstress confessed.
Charlie died in 2000 aged 56 with Judds posters all over his trailer, a heartrending final tribute to the woman he left behind and the daughter he never knew.
'I didn't go to his funeral because I felt it would be "too much" for his family,' Wynonna explained in the new docuseries.
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