Terry Crews was an NFL star in the early 1990s who found major fame in the NBC comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But those years weren't always easy for his five children, as their mom Rebecca now shares they were often bullied.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine ran from 2013 until 2021, and Terry played Sergeant Terry Giffords, the long-suffering Sergeant who would try to corral his team of detectives.
At that time, three of his children – Tera, now 26, Wynfrey, 21, and Isaiah, 19 – were in school, and Rebecca tells HELLO! that she and Terry made an intentional decision to live in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena to ensure a better way of life for their children.
© Rodin Eckenroth"Part of raising them as normally we could was, we chose to live in Pasadena," the fashion designer tells HELLO! "I purposely moved my family to Pasadena in 2000 and I made a commitment that my kids were going to play sports and take ballet and go to church and we're going to be as normal as we could.
"As Dad got more famous, of course, the kids took some hate, they took a little bit of bullying, But overall, my children did well: they had friends, they were in the school plays."
Several of their children are following in their parents footsteps – Rebecca is a creative who has also released music – with one of her daughter's graduating from NYU, and another an aspiring screenwriter.
Her son Isaiah landed a role in the Nickelodeon comedy Side Hustle in 2020.
© Nickolodeon"These kids are all gung-ho for the business and that was my hope, that if they want to be in the industry, they would come to me and say, 'Mom, we want to do this,' and that's kind of what has happened," she added.
"I absolutely told my children that we would support their dreams but we also told them, 'It's not just a nepotism thing here, you can't just come to me and say, 'I want to be on TV.' You need to get in class, you need to do the work.'"
© Rodin EckenrothRebecca recently opened her first store in Los Angeles, four years after launching her womenswear brand that has been worn by the likes of Avril Lavigne, Christina Milian and Cynthia Bailey.
"For me it just felt like, 'Now it's my turn to do some things I want to do,'" the 58-year-old said of the decision to go into fashion, after mostly being a stay-at-home mom and pastor for three decades.
© Randy ShropshireThe support from her husband and children has helped her to continue this passion.
"To a large degree it's mom's thing but my girls love fashion," she said.
"I have a couple of little fashionistas that love to shop, and they have a beautiful sense of style and enjoy what I do and they've given me suggestions, they've put their two cents in – I have one daughter who said, 'Mom, you should do shapewear,' and I can see that. But at the same time, I think that's down the line for me, but they're thinking big."
