Arnold Schwarzenegger Recalls Maria Shriver Asking If Joseph Baena Was His Son

The action star admits, in a new Netflix doc simply titled "Arnold", that Shriver asked him point blank during the therapy session if he was Joseph Baena's father. The boy's mother, Mildred Baena, was one of their house workers.

The now 75-year-old tells all in the docu-series and recalls the moment his ex wife learned of the indiscretion.

"Maria and I went to counseling once a week," Arnold recounts, "and in one of the sessions the counselor said, 'I think today Maria wants to be very specific about something. She wants to know if you are the father of Joseph.' And I was like— I thought my heart stopped, and then I told the truth."

"'Yes, Maria, Joseph is my son,'" the "FUBAR" star says he told her. "She was crushed because of that. I had an affair in ’96. In the beginning I really didn’t know. I just started feeling the older he got the more it became clear to me and then it was really just a matter of how do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?"

However, Arnold says he is "reluctant" for more than one reason to talk about this "failure" -- first of all because "every time I do it opens up the wounds again."

"I think that I have caused enough pain for my family because of my f--- up. Everyone had to suffer. Maria had to suffer. The kids had to suffer. Joseph. His mother. Everyone," he says, per People.

Among his children with Maria, who he wed in 1986, are Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher. Schwarzenegger and Shriver ended their marriage in 2011, just days before it was publicly revealed he had fathered a child (Joseph) with former household employee, Mildred. The revelation came after his run as governor of California had just ended.

"I am going to have to live with it the rest of my life," Arnold says in the doc. "People will remember my successes and they will also remember my failures. This is a major failure. I had failures in the past in my career, but this is a whole different ball game, dimension of failure."

However, another reason he says he rarely talks about the affair is because of the "fantastic" child that came out of it.

"It was wrong what I did. But I don’t want to make Joseph feel that he is not welcomed in this world — because he is very much welcomed in this world," he says. "I love him and he has turned out to be an extraordinary young man."

And despite the failure of the marriage, Arnold expresses his gratitude to Maria for finding a way to continue to raise a successful family with him.

"There is nothing more important than to have a good partner by your side, and every step of the way Maria was that. We have a really great relationship," he says in the doc. "Any type of special day, we are all together as a family. But it’s not what it was when we were all together under one roof as a family. That’s not the case anymore."

Shriver, for her part, revealed in February while appearing on an episode of the "Making Space with Hoda Kotb" podcast, that she had gone to a convent to seek life advice after their marriage ended.

Their divorce was finalized in December 2021, ten years after they initially filed.

"Arnold" streams on Netflix starting June 7.