ICYMI Ricky Paull Goldin Interview

Father’s Day will be doubly special for soap vet Ricky Paull Goldin, who is expecting his second child on June 15. “Here’s how I look at it: I think if you have a baby in your 20s or 30s, you ruin your youth, and if you have them in your 40s or 50s, you ruin your retirement,” he quips. “So, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Basically, I’m only doing this to have more children come home at Thanksgiving and Christmas [laughs]. I’m only half-kidding.”

When Goldin and Gretta Monahan found out that their family would be expanding, “Well, I cried, to be honest with you,” he recalls. “We were at home, binge-watching DOWNTON ABBEY or something, and we got the call, and it just made me very emotional. I didn’t know if it would ever happen again. I think we both thought at one point, ‘This is going to be it. We’re going to have one amazing kid, and that would be that.’ ”

The couple, who welcomed son Kai, 6, in 2010, initially thought about having another. “When we first had him, Gretta wanted to have another child right away,” Goldin relays. “And I think that with everything going down with ALL MY CHILDREN going off the air, we were reorganizing our lives and figuring out what coast we should live on, and before you knew it, time flew by. But I didn’t press the issue, and I’m actually happy because Kai got to have his moment in the sun being an only child. Being an only child myself, and Gretta being an only child, I think that’s beautiful. Now, he’s going to be a big enough boy to have responsibility as opposed to, ‘You’re taking my toys, they got more than me,’ you know?”

Goldin says his other half has been “a rock star” throughout the pregnancy. “She doesn’t miss a beat. She’s running her stores and her shops and her salons and working on RACHAEL RAY and THE VIEW; the woman is a machine. It’s true what they say, women are a lot stronger than men in a lot of ways. I get a stomach bug, and I’m out, but she’s sitting across the table building a human being. I really can’t compete with that.”

Now that he’s gone through it once, Goldin says he’s better prepared for another child. “I’m just not going to be as nervous a dad the second time around,” he asserts. “When we had Kai, we were living in California and I drove the routes from our house to Cedars-Sinai [hospital] several times. You just can’t believe they’re handing you a baby and you’re bringing it home and expected to keep it alive without any supervision. But then you realize how durable they are, and how strong they really are. This may be a silly thing, but the No. 1 thing I won’t be doing is buying as many clothes. All the baby clothes that we got for Kai? I think much of them he never wore because he wore the same five or six things over and over and then by the time you get to something, they’ve outgrown it. I’m already brokenhearted that we gave a lot of our stuff away from when he was little. So, I just won’t be as crazy with the spoiling stuff. ”

The duo is expecting another boy, about which, Goldin admits, “I’m very excited, trust me, but secretly, deep inside, I always saw myself having a little girl somewhere in my life. You know, having a daughter so I could spoil her and protect her all her life. I’m going to love this little boy as much as a human being can love anybody, but I would have been over the moon with a little girl, as well.”

To break the news to the world, Goldin shared a video on social media of him and Gretta telling Kai, who was surprised, to say the least. “I wasn’t planning on posting it, but he was such a funny little guy with his reaction, and out of the mouth of babes as they say, you always get honesty out of children. He was still a gentleman about it, but as parents it’s funny how you navigate those waters. I didn’t know it would get this kind of reaction. We’re up to, like, 185,000 people who have watched this thing. It’s crazy.”

As he looks forward to welcoming another son, Goldin shares that his life has changed for the better since becoming a dad. “It’s taught me so much,” he reflects. “I think it’s the best thing that can happen to a performer. I think it’s the best thing that can happen to any human being because it teaches you not to be so self-involved, narcissistic and self-centered. Even if you want to be those things or you are those things, you just can’t be all the time because they take your time and your attention. They need your love and your guidance, and they need you. It’s so clichéd to say you don’t know love until you have a child to love. I mean, it’s true. My mom is gone now, and she was a strict, tough mom, and she was overbearing at times, as well, but now I get it. I get where her intensity was coming from. I love this little guy. Even when we’re crossing the street in New York City and a car comes too close, all kinds of chemicals go off in my body to protect him. It really makes you grow as a person. I can’t imagine having two little boys that I’m going to be taking to baseball practice and Tae Kwon Do. It’s an amazing, spiritual ride.”

Behind The Scenes

Goldin has found great success behind the camera as a creator and executive producer of a slew of series. “We wrapped season one of PROJECT DAD for Discovery Family, Discovery Life and TLC, and it’s coming back for a season two,” he lists. “We’re selling that show internationally. I have a show that I did years ago  called STREET MATCH. That was just picked up in Europe again. It’s already on the air in London. We have a series in China that we’re doing this summer about gamers, the kids who play video games. It’s an amazing thing that’s happening in the world of gaming on the Internet, and it’s the most watched anything on the Internet. My partner, Derek Britt, and I are bringing back HIDDEN HEROES on CBS for its third season on Saturday mornings with our star, Brooke Burke. We are now moving into scripted and features, and we have several things on the slate.” But he hasn’t given up performing. “I’ll be an actor until I’m dead,” he declares. “I feel like that’s who I am, but I feel like the only way to grow, for me, is to also be creating the shows. But it doesn’t take anything away from my being an actor. It never will.”