We’ve already heard about some pretty dramatic relationships that Jessica Simpson detailed in her new memoir, Open Book, but none of those compare to the complicated relationship the singer had with her father, Joe Simpson.
The 39-year-old performer’s former dadager took up plenty of pages in her new tell-all, which chronicled how grumpy he allegedly was on her wedding day to Nick Lachey to the super inappropriate moment he decided to tell Jess he was leaving her mother, Tina Simpson.
The superstar also recalled the time Joe told her he was bringing a male model that she didn’t know to her wedding with Eric Johnson.
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She wrote:
“My father called me three days before we left for the wedding to tell me he was bringing his friend Jonathan, a young model he often shot for his new photography business. I reminded myself that I needed to accept my father for who he was as he worked it out in real-time… I wasn’t sure how to handle my father now, so I worked with the information he was ready to give me. Maybe I wasn’t ready to listen, I don’t know.”
That wasn’t the first time Joe impacted a wedding for Jessica: right before her 2002 wedding to Nick, Joe apparently tried to convince the Public Affair singer to reconsider the marriage.
Explaining how Joe was awful through the whole engagement, Jessica wrote:
“He was convinced that Nick didn’t understand commitment, which I didn’t think was fair. ‘Marriage is about hanging in there,’ he said. I know he accused Nick of making me dependent on him for everything, which is the pot calling up the kettle to have a long talk about being black… There’s just no nice way to put it. He continually told me I was making a mistake and told Nick to his face that I was too young to get married.”
During the rehearsal dinner the night before her and Nick’s wedding, Jess said her father “acted as if the next day was his execution. He moped and kept shaking his head, right in front of Nick’s family.”
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Joe apparently made one last plea with his daughter the next day — right before he was about to walk Jess down the aisle. She wrote:
“‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked. I didn’t answer, and he continued. ‘I’m right here. We can—’ ‘Dad, please.’ ‘You don’t have to.’…I fixed a smile, knowing the doors would swing open at any second. ‘Dad, I’m walking down this aisle and getting married,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘You’re giving me away. You have to. I’ll always be your little girl, but you have to do this for me.’ I took a step, dragging my father into movement. He briefly got it together but cried the whole way down the aisle. It was brutal.”
Interestingly enough, Joe had a very sweet response when Jess told him she was divorcing Nick in 2006, telling his daughter:
“I wish I had the courage that you have to do that with your mom.”
He eventually did that, years later — and decided to break the news to the songstress at an already stressful time: when she was in the hospital awaiting the arrival of her first child, Maxwell.
While Joe seemingly meant well, thanking Jessica for “showing him the way” through her separation and finding the life she was “meant to have” in her subsequent marriage to Eric, his daughter didn’t know how to react to the shocking news.
She wrote:
“I was completely blindsided, as I knew my mother would be. For my survival, and my daughter’s protection, I buried the news. I refused to deal with it and instead focused on welcoming Maxwell… My father’s timing added a layer of terrible sadness to what had been a joyous time. For a long time, I harbored a lot of resentment about the way he told me the family I knew was over.”
That moment happened a few months later, when Jess claims Tina found out that Joe “had betrayed their marriage.” She recalled:
“In August, my mother discovered that my father had betrayed their marriage, just as she and I thought things were turning around for them. She had just told me what a nice time they had together on their anniversary, and she thought maybe they had turned a corner. I thought so, too. When she confronted him, my dad began calling me, and I would not pick up.”
Joe then showed up to her house, causing a scene Jess’s hubby had to dismantle. She wrote:
“‘I’m not with anybody else,’ he said. ‘I love your mother.’ … That’s when Eric stepped in. He said something like, ‘Each time you deny your own truth, something intense happens. You have to listen to the signs and take care of it yourself. Jess has no extra energy to give to you right now.'”
Jessica said she even “stopped seeing” Joe for a while after that, adding that her younger sister Ashlee Simpson’s relationship was stronger with him during that time.
The Dukes of Hazard actress then made a tough decision in 2012: she decided to fire her father as her manager — a role he’d held since the beginning of her career. She wrote:
“He thought I was following my mother’s wishes, but he had made some bad deals for me. It took about five times to really fire him before the message stuck.”
While Joe remains removed from Jess’ career to this day, he has since repaired his relationship with his daughter, who describes one of her new songs, Practice What You Preach, as “a direct hit” at her dad.
She wrote:
“His choice to leave my mother was like a bomb going off in my life, and I still found myself clinging to whatever I could hold on to.. He didn’t mean to hurt all of us so badly, but I knew for a fact that he had realized his decision would have consequences. I know he knew that because that’s what he had taught me. But I had kept that from him. And now I needed him to hear that I was singing about him.”
We have a feeling Joe hears his daughter loud and clear now.
[Image via WENN]
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