When Wanda Sykes hosts the 94th Academy Awards, three of her biggest fans will cheer her on: her wife Alex Niedbalski and their twins, Olivia and Lucas! Get to know this family.
“I didn’t want kids. I had no vision of having kids at all,” Wanda Skyes said in a 2019 interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. But, as Tom Waits sang, “Seems like folks turn into things / That they’d never want,” because, during that interview, Wanda was the proud mother of two fraternal twins: Oliva Lou Sykes and Lucas Clause Sykes.
Wanda and her wife, Alex Niedbalski, welcomed the twins in 2009, a year after they tied the knot. “All are happy and healthy at home,” Wanda’s rep said in a statement, per TODAY. Since then, Wanda has embraced motherhood, even though she never saw herself as a mom. “When I met my wife, she – that was her thing. ‘Look. Right up front, I want kids,” Wanda told Fresh Air. “And I was like, ‘well, can you give me, like, six months to think about it? And let’s just continue dating, and then we’ll see. And if I know it’s not for me, then, you know, we’ll just call this quits, and you go on and find somebody who wants to have kids.’”
Wanda Sykes and Alex Sykes at the 25th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards(Shutterstock)“So she agreed, so – but after that six months, even before then, I quickly was like, ‘you know? Why wouldn’t you want kids? Why wouldn’t you want to start a family with this person?’ And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.” So, here’s what you need to know about her kids.
Olivia Lou Sykes
Alex Sykes, left, Wanda Sykes, arrive at night one of the Television Academy’s 2019 Creative Arts Emmy Awards (Shutterstock)Olivia was born on April 27, 2009. She came in at 6 pounds, 7 ounces, and was 19-inches long. Alex gave birth to both children, and she and Wanda have raised them together.
“Raising the kids took a lot out of Wanda during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m tired. I’m just tired. I don’t know where the day goes,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020. “I’ve been working from home, so it’s a lot of meetings, our writers’ room for this Netflix show, The Upshaws, wrapped last Friday, [April 17,] and then the kids take up so much of your time. And then it’s, ‘Oh, I guess we have to eat. Let me open up the cafeteria.’ “
“The majority of my time now is the cafeteria lady, the janitor, and the hall monitor. It’s crazy,” she said. “By the time they go to bed, Alex and I sit down to watch something, and we barely make it through an episode of anything. We both fall asleep.”
Lucas Claude Sykes
Olivia’s twin brother, Lucas, was born on the same date – April 27, 2009 – and was 7 pounds, 9 ounces, and 20 inches long.
Lucas, like his sister, has taken over Wanda’s world as she adjusts to motherhood in COVID. “I’m usually up by 8, and then the kids eat, read and get ready to start class at 9 and then Alex and I discuss the day,” Wanda told THR. “[Alex] goes into her office, and I go down into the basement. I have a couple of projects that I’ve been asked to work on, and I never had a chance, so I’m now looking into those things and trying to develop a few other shows. When the kids start classes at 9, I check in on Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC. I like her. And Nicole Wallace, too. But I have to sneak it in because we don’t like to have the news on in front of the kids right now.”
Wanda and Alex have done their best to raise their kids out of the spotlight, giving them a chance to grow up normally without the pressures of being the kids of a world-famous comedian. So, not many know what they look like, but Wanda has often joked that her kids are white and her wife is white, thus making her a minority in her own home.
“Of course, you want the kids to look like you. Why not? You earned it. Go for it. And also, I was like, you know, why do the kids have to – need to look biracial to mirror us?” Wanda told NRP. “Like I said, we’re two women. We can’t make a baby. So their skin color, to me, didn’t – wasn’t, like, you know, something that I needed to feel like they’re my kids. You know, they are my kids, and they identify us as the French mom and the English mom.”
Wanda also said that motherhood has been a blessing, mainly because it “takes you out of yourself, you know? Just to be able to just love something so much and just want to be there and take care of them and not worry about yourself,” per NPR. “It’s just good to know that I have that capability. You know, it’s like, ‘oh, I could do this. I thought I was so self-absorbed, but this is – wow. Look at me. Look at me, parenting and being caring about something else, you know, other than myself.’ Yeah, it’s just beautiful. “
