Jason Bateman makes a rare comment about his sister Justine Bateman
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — The state of Jason Bateman’s relationship with his sister Justine has stirred speculation over the years thanks to their differing politics and now he has shared a tiny bit of insight.
In a recent interview with Esquire the “Zootopia 2” star talked briefly about why he and his sister, actress/director Justine Bateman, don’t see each other much.
“There isn’t the typical ‘We see each other every Thanksgiving or every Christmas and our kids want to be together.’ There isn’t that. In a great way,” he said. “Our conversations are the rich conversations you would have with an adult friend, not the kind of petulant back-and-forth you might have with your adult sibling.”
“We hang out, and we’re nice to each other because we respect one another as individuals regardless of the blood thing,” Bateman added. “I’m seeing her for lunch next week.”
Their relationship has been the subject of scrutiny given Justine Bateman’s support of President Donald Trump and her brother’s past criticism of Trump’s supporters.
Justine Bateman tried to squash the speculation in September, when she took to X to say that “Anyone bringing up my brother to me for any other reason than to say you like his new upcoming show, or any of his past work, will be muted at best, and blocked at worst.”
“I’m not interested in your fantasy about some imagined conflict between the two of us over your political ideologies. Really, it’s sick, ” she wrote. “So, keep it up. It makes it easy for me if identify yourselves, so I can make an X setting adjustment to never have to hear from you, ever again.”
That was a few months after Jason Bateman appeared on “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” podcast in June and joked he was “addicted” to “the Trump show.”
“I can’t stop watching the things that he does and the things that he says and marry that to the fact that there are 80-some million people that would vote again for him tomorrow,” he said.
He also took some heat from conservatives for referring to Trump as an “arsonist” and putting forth “do you think Trump would have gotten the same number of votes if the people who voted for him had access to or the curiosity to seek out and find the truth because they’re not getting the truth over on Fox?”
“And again, I’m not wishing harm on anyone, but it’s tragic that I think the people who are least equipped to bear what the Trump administration is going to yield are a lot of the folks that voted for him, and that’s really freaking sad,” Bateman said.
The siblings started out as child actors, he as James, the orphan adopted by the Ingalls family on the beloved long running 1970s TV drama “Little House on the Prairie,” and she as teen daughter Mallory on the hit 1980s comedy “Family Ties.”
In the interview with Esquire he referenced their early careers telling the publication “My sister and I had a peer relationship with our parents; they were our managers.”
Since then he has gone on to other famous television roles including in “Arrested Development” and “Ozark” while his sister has moved more behind the camera as a writer, director and producer.
It’s not the first time he has talked about his relationship with his sister, but it’s been some time.
During an appearance on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast in 2015 Jason Bateman admitted that he and his sister weren’t super close.
“You’re not handcuffed because of the blood,” he said at the time. “You’ve gotta earn it.”
The-CNN-Wire
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