Elle King Just Told Her Dad, Rob Schneider, To "Get F***ed"

My goal is to ensure my children will not be afraid to tell me anything. They’re only three now, yes, but the thought has been firmly in my head since their birth. I don’t care what it is. If they crash my car, I want them to tell me. If they are not comfortable in their bodies, I want them to tell me. If someone hurt them, I want them to tell me. I have a long way to go, but dammit, I’m going to try my hardest. There is plenty I am sure I will be wrong about, but dammit, I’m going to try. I certainly don’t want them publicly disavowing our relationship.

Being a parent is not easy. There are tons of ways to screw up. I’m sure there are ways that I am screwing up, currently, which I will find out about when my kids are in their 20s. For now, I’m leading with kindness and compassion. I’m keeping my mind open both to how my kids are changing and how the world is changing. My life will likely not turn out exactly as I want, and I can’t take that out on my children. I can’t attempt to control them (outside of the standard parental controls) as a way of exerting control over my own life.

I don’t have the answers! I could be wrong in what I’m presuming is the issue between Elle King and her father, Rob Schneider. I’m simply going off of what she said on a recent podcast appearance. The singer/songwriter appeared on Bunnie XO’s podcast Dumb Blonde. There, they talked about King’s relationship (or lack thereof) with her copy-loving dad. Schneider has not been shy about expressing his conservative views and, surprise surprise, they can often be pretty racist and/or s***ty.

King is no stranger to her dad’s public bigotry (even if she’d like to be). “I disagree with a lot of the things that he says,” King told Bunnie XO. “You’re talking out of your ass and you’re talking s*** about drag and, you know, anti-gay rights. And it’s like, get f***ed.” There are likely to be cultural divides between parents and their kids. This sounds pretty strong, though. It doesn’t help that King says Schneider was not the most involved as a father, and when he was, it doesn’t sound great.

Later on, King mentions that she didn’t connect with Schneider until she “was much, much older.” If King did get to spend time with her dad, it was on movie sets. In these instances, she claims she would be “lost in the shuffle.” Things would be even worse if King messed anything up on any of her dad’s sets. According to King, “If I ever messed up a shot, if I was talking, I would get in f***ing trouble.” That doesn’t sound great, but god forbid something gets screwed up on Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

These are Elle King’s version of events. Until Rob Schneider comments, they are all we have to go on and they are not good. They even get worse. “I was like a really, really heavy child. My dad sent me to fat camp … and then I got in trouble one year because I sprained my ankle and didn’t lose any weight,” King continued. “I had already started getting tattooed and it was, like, 108 degrees. So I had to wear sweaters because my dad was very anti-tattoos or any form of self-expression.” As someone who was made fun of for my weight both at school and at the dinner table, this one hit extra hard.

Given everything that she said, I don’t blame King for not wanting to be associated with her father. “He’s just not nice,” King explained. “You can want someone to change so much. You can’t control anyone else’s actions and you can’t control people’s feelings. All you can control is how you react and what you do with your feelings.” My worst fear is that one of my kids would think of me this way. Maybe it is Schneider’s too. If it is, it doesn’t sound like he did much to avoid it.