Brooke Shields' Youngest Daughter, Grier Hammond Henchy, Reveals the Moment She Discovered Her Mother's Sexual Assault While Watching Her 2023 Documentary Beautiful Little Girl.
“I was learning things at the same time the world was happening and I just took it more deeply and personally,” Grier said recently. People magazine in a joint interview with Shields and her older sister, Rowan Francis Henchy. “I didn't even get to finish it.”
In the two-part Hulu documentary, Shields explores her six-decade acting career and reveals for the first time that she was sexually assaulted in her 20s by an unnamed Hollywood executive.
Although Rowan knew about her mother's assault, Shields admitted she “didn't prepare” her youngest daughter for the documentary's sensitive subject matter.
“It was a misunderstanding,” the actress explained. “I explained that it was an exploration of the sexualization of women in my industry, but I naively thought that because we had such a solid, healthy, fairly normal existence and I wasn't completely damaged, she would be like, 'Wow, you've overcome so much, but look where we are today.'”
The shields said People who tried to tell Grier there was a “happy ending,” but her daughter responded, “I will never agree that anything bad happened to you.”
“Ultimately, she lost the happy part,” the actress added. “She felt helpless, and just like a mom, we make mistakes and sometimes we make assumptions.”
Shields shares her two daughters with husband Chris Henchy.
Last year, Shields also opened a The Hollywood Reporter about a moment towards the end of the documentary, when she is sitting with her daughters at the table and talking about Beautiful Little Girl and their thoughts on what she faced as a child actress.
“It shocked me,” the actress recalled. “It wasn't in the plan. But the things my daughters said, I'm not sure I would have had that level of conversation if I had done this documentary. [not] come up. Hearing their perspective and seeing them interact with me as a young woman and for them to talk about me as a child and me as a mother, and to be in that environment together was really touching. It feels like the right time for [this conversation].”