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I know I can’t be the only person kind of fascinated by the fact that Sarunas Jackson (who plays Dro on “Insecure”) had a baby with his co-star DomiNque Perry (who played Tasha.) Though their characters never met onscreen, in real life they found their way to one another. The two kept things under wraps while Perry was carrying their 2-month-old daughter. But during a recent interview with Hollywood Unlocked, Jackson talked about how the two met, the situation that led up to them conceiving a child, their unconventional relationship and the birth of his daughter Zen.
Check it out below.
HU: I see you tweeted a picture, bro. You a Papi now?
Jackson: Yeah man. I got a lil girl.
HU: Congrats man!
Jackson: Thank you man.
HU: You know what that mean…you was out here doggin’ these girls.
Jackson: First of all, that’s not true…it might be like a delayed karma, yeah. I feel like I’m a really good man now but from 18-22 Lord. Everybody has that whore stage.
HU: Are you ready for the responsibilities? The pressure of having a little girl? Because I know she’s beautiful. She’s gorgeous.
Jackson: Yeah man. She has these big, beautiful eyes. She get em from her mom. Everything else is me.
HU: So can I say who her mom is?
Jackson: Yeah, yeah. Everybody know.
HU: So DomiNque Perry. You went from working with her to workin’ her.
Jackson: Uh…alright. Here’s the thing. It’s never something planned. When I’m on a show or a film, I don’t ever want to cross a line while working. But we had became and we’re still good friends. We’ve been friends this whole time. It was never—we’re just really good friends and then it just—one thing led to another this certain weekend. And it happened.
The way it started was we met during a fitting and she was really cool. And she’s hilarious, right? So I would invite her out to hang out with us sometimes. But there was never an intention there. We were just hanging out, we were just friends. We understood we were on the same show. And we started hanging out more and then that weekend…something just.
HU: Was y’all studying a scene together?
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Jackson: Nah. We went to an event and afterwards, ‘Oh, what are you doing? That type of stuff.’ But we’ve always had good conversational vibe and at this point, I knew she was written off the show. It was one of them things I just kind of floated into. You kind of get close to the people you’re working with, especially if you’re likeminded people.
HU: At first, did she try to keep the pregnancy on the low?
Jackson: Yeah because privacy is very important to me. I cherish privacy. I don’t want all that. And at that time, I understood our situation is going to be…there’s a lot of ignorant people out there. And a lot of people have their opinions and stuff. And social media warriors are always going to like, you know. And our situation isn’t like a traditional one in a sense where we’re in a relationship, we’re going to get married and do all that. So I knew it would be best if we just figure out what we’re doing with this. Which was pretty easy.
HU: A lot of tv stars are in very successful relationships. Like the couple from “Empire.” They’re married.
Jackson: See that’s what I’m saying though. That’s different. It would be one thing if me and her were getting married or were in this public, loving relationship or something like that. But that wasn’t the case. And I knew people were going to have something to say. And I wanted her pregnancy to be as simple and easy as possible. And I’d rather to keep the negativity out of there because I wanted our daughter to be healthy.
HU: Her name’s Zen right?
Jackson: Yeah, my little Zenie. I’ll tell you this. We decided on the name, finalized the name at the last second. She had to go into a emergency c-section. She had brought up Zen. I wanted Nova. So she wanted to have a natural birth. She was eight centimeters dilated. Man, our baby, her heart rate kept dropping with the contractions. It was starting to become too much for her. And her heart rate dropped really low because you could hear in the monitor. It was like beep and then it was like loooong pause. And I was like ‘What the…’ And I’m like ‘Oh, I’m trippin. Maybe it’s the machine.’
Next thing I know, nurses are coming in. And they’re trying to keep it calm, so you’re not panicking. But five of you muhf*ckas are not going to come in here for no reason. I’m like ‘What the hell?!’ And the doctor had to come in and break the news that she had to have an emergency c-section. DomiNique crying.
And also on top of that, our doctor is a Chinese man, from China and their culture, they’re not necessarily the most personable people. I like that but DomiNique felt he was rude. But he’s just doing a job, being direct.
And her mom was telling her, ‘Baby, we got to do this now. Ain’t no time to think. You want your daughter, then we got to do this now.’
So it was all this craziness so I felt I had to take on the responsibility of being the cool one and just talk to her, ‘Listen, we want a healthy daughter at the end of the day. I know what you wanted to do but plans change. That’s what happens.’ And I was like, ‘You know what. I just want peace right now, so we’ll name our baby girl Zen.’
And she was like, ‘Really! Alright. We’ll do it.’ And it just calmed everything down. And you know what? She didn’t even cry when she came out. She let out a little whimper and that was it. At first, I was concerned like, ‘Uhh…” but she was just very responsive right away, her eyes were open, looking at me when I was talking to her. And she’s a pretty good baby. She’ll fuss when she’s hungry or something but as soon as you take care of that, she stops.
You can watch the full video below and the part about his relationship with DomiNque and his daughter begins at 27:10.
