Brooke Hogan has opened up about her complicated relationship with her late father, WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan, and the events she believes ultimately changed their bond.
Speaking with Us Weekly, Brooke pointed to Hogan’s affair with her friend Christiane Plante as a major turning point in their relationship. Although Brooke said she forgave her father, she believes something between them was never quite the same afterward.
“A major turning point came after he slept with my friend Christiane [Plante]. I forgive people very easily — sometimes probably too easily — and I forgave him, but something between us changed afterward. I don’t think he ever related to me in quite the same way again.”
Brooke said the subsequent divorce between Hulk and Linda Hogan further changed the family’s dynamic.
“Then the divorce happened [between Hulk and his wife Linda], and our entire family structure changed. Over time, things became increasingly complicated until eventually the relationship I had always believed could survive anything couldn’t survive what was happening around us anymore.”
She also pushed back against attempts to reduce the Hogan family’s problems to a simple story of who was right or wrong.
“That’s probably the biggest thing I wish people understood about the Hogan family: Public perception reduces families into heroes and villains. Real families aren’t that simple.”
Brooke described a family environment in which fame, money and unresolved personal issues existed alongside the love she still had for her father.
“There was also dysfunction, fear, resentment, enormous betrayal, money, fame, image management and decades of unresolved hurt all existing underneath the same roof.”
Despite everything that happened between them, Brooke said acknowledging the ways her father hurt her does not diminish the love she had for him or the positive experiences they shared.
“I can love my father profoundly and still tell the truth about where he hurt me. I can acknowledge the wonderful things my family gave me while also acknowledging that eventually the dynamic became something I could no longer live inside. Both things can be true.”
Brooke and her father’s relationship had been the subject of considerable public discussion in the years before Hogan’s death, with Brooke previously explaining that she had chosen to step away from family relationships that she felt were no longer healthy for her.
