Former teen idol Shaun Cassidy recently labeled his late father, Broadway and television star Jack Cassidy, a “phony.”
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Shaun, who gained fame in the 1970s, revealed that he and his brothers, including actor Patrick and the late David, saw through their father’s public persona.
“My dad was so complicated,” the 67-year-old recently told PEOPLE. “He basically invented this public persona with an accent that didn’t exist in any country ever.”
Jack Cassidy was born in New York City into a family of engineers and was expected to follow the family railroad tradition—until a trip to Broadway at 14 derailed those plans.
As Jack Cassidy gained fame, he appeared on talk shows, speaking with a borderline-English accent. This baffled Shaun and his younger brothers—Patrick, 63, and Ryan, 59—who had never heard him speak like that at home.
“Patrick and Ryan and I would be like, ‘What is up with this dude?’ ” Shaun told the outlet. “I mean, it seemed so phony to us, and that wasn’t like who he was. I’m not sure he ever really figured out who he was.”
Shaun Cassidy Says His Father Gave Him ‘So Many Gifts’ Despite Shortcomings
“He was not a good father — and I don’t say that with disrespect. I just say it with objectivity,” Shaun continued. “And yet I wouldn’t have traded him for the world. I got so many gifts from him, so many.”
“I didn’t get the dad who went to my Little League games or took me on camping trips or any of that stuff. My mom did,” Shaun added, referring to his mom, actress Shirley Jones. “My mom showed up for a lot of that stuff, but she was also gone a lot. She was making movies around the world. I think one of the reasons she took the Partridge Family job is because she wanted to be close to home.”
He also told PEOPLE that Jack and Shirley, married from 1956 to 1975, were not as the public perceived them.
“Who they really are is not how they’re perceived by the public anyway. The public has an idea of who they are,” Shaun recalled. “If you grow up in a family of show folk, everything is very presentational.”
“I talked to my brothers about this the other day,” he added. “I had very, very few photographs of our family just sitting around the living room. Almost all the pictures I have were taken by professional photographers, often for magazines.”
Shaun Cassidy Admits He Liked Seeing the Public Fawn Over His Parents
Shaun quickly realized his parents cared deeply about their public image. However, he also enjoyed seeing people fawn over them.
“Going out in public with them as a little kid, everyone was in love with my mother, and everybody was sort of dazzled by my father,” he admitted. “I remember being proud of that, feeling like, ‘Oh, isn’t that cool?'”
“I remember thinking my mother’s really beautiful, and I didn’t know how beautiful she was; I was just a little kid. Now I see her, though, in context. She is still. She’s 91 years old and she looks younger than us,” Shaun added.
With his parents often working, Shaun largely raised himself in Los Angeles, confiding in other actors’ children who faced similar challenges.
“I have a whole friend group, kids, we were like Peanuts,” he joked, referring to Charles M. Schulz’s iconic comic strip. “The parents weren’t around. And yet all of us had similar backgrounds. I mean, Carrie Fisher was two doors down, and she was a good pal of mine. We all got through it with challenges, for sure. We not only survived but thrived, and I think we looked after each other.”
Once a teen idol, the singer stepped away from the spotlight in the ’90s to become a writer, producer, and creator of TV shows.
But Shaun is returning to the stage. He kicked off his 50-city The Road to Us tour at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry on Sept. 13.
This marks the “That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” singer’s first full arena tour since 1980, and his longest tour to date.