Queer Eye star and culture expert Karamo Brown has opened up about learning he was a father, revealing that the news initially came as a shock.
Speaking to magazine, Brown said that he first learned of his son Jason, then 10-years-old, in 2006 via a letter in the mail.
“On the front page was ‘Texas Attorney General’s Office'," Brown said. "The second page read: ‘Subpoena for Back Child Support'. I thought: Ashton Kutcher is inside my house. I’m getting punked!”
Brown soon realised that the child's mother was a friend of his from high school who he'd slept with when he was 15.
“I literally spit out the juice I was drinking,” he explained in his upcoming book, Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope.
“Now I was fully freaking out.”
He continued: “A little voice in my head was saying: ‘Karamo, you don’t have to do this. You’re a child, and you’re supposed to go in there and raise a child? Run for your life',” he said.
“At the same time, I thought: ‘What if he needs me?'"
"I was scared. I realised that I created this child who I had no idea about that’s living there, that I now messed him up.
"There’s something about the first moment of seeing your child,” Brown told People. “All the pieces of me that I felt were missing got sewn up the minute I saw his face. I looked at this little fourth-grade boy, and I thought, 'I can do this'.”
Brown later moved to Texas to be closer to his son, gaining custody soon after.