Kate Ferdinand became step-mum to former footballer Rio Ferdinand’s kids after their wedding and the pair have gone on to have two children together
Rio Ferdinand‘s son Tate has opened up for the first time about the difficulties he had in accepting stepmum Kate into the family home – saying he regarded her as “a problem” and at first would only tell people she was his auntie.
Tate, now 18, also told how at first he and his older brother Lorenz resented the prospect of Rio and Kate having their first child together, saying he expected to hate it.
Meanwhile, as the family revealed honestly their past feelings to each other, former England footballer Rio admitted that negotiating a blended family had proved such a difficult ride that he would not want his daughter Tia, now 15, to ever enter into one – even though his own family unit has now come through their difficulties.
Kate admitted: “There’s been a lot of crisis talks over the years.”
Rio, 47, had his three older children Lorenz, 19, Tate, 18, and Tia, 15, with first wife Rebecca, who tragically died of breast cancer aged 34 in 2015. He went on to marry Kate Wright in 2019, and the couple have since gone on to have two children together, Cree, now five, and Shae, two.
Now Tate, 17, who is trying to follow in his father’s footsteps by carving out a football career with Brighton, has given his honest thoughts about his feelings over the changing family dynamics.
Asked by Kate how he first felt about her arrival, he said: “At the start I think I was excited. I remember being at school in dad’s car waiting to go in and dad said ‘Kate’s going to come over tonight’ – I think we might have known you already – or ‘we’re going to meet Kate’ or ‘Kate’s going to move in’, I can’t remember which one it was.
“We were all like ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’, buzzing, and as soon as it started getting close to it I’m ‘right, she’s actually coming in man’. And then my feelings changed a little bit.
“When you were actually moving in and you were there, and I got a bit used to you, and the excitement was almost over, that’s when I started to think ‘There’s a problem here – we’ve got a problem’.
“One side of me was saying ‘Yes, I’m so excited to have someone new and fun in the house to do fun things’ and the other half was fuming ‘who’s this random taking over my mum’s spot, taking my dad away from me’.
“At that moment I thought you were taking him away almost. Me and Lorenz – not so much Tia, because she was young – used to listen through the door ‘what are they talking about downstairs?’
“We’d be at the top of the stairs talking, ‘What is she doing down there?’ I felt quite bitter at the start to be honest. I think when it was good I loved you. Whenever something didn’t go my way you would send me to bed or you would tell me to do that, then I would be thinking ‘Who are you to tell me to do that?’
“I almost saw you as an auntie, not a mother. I remember being in school and you and dad would pick me up and someone would ask ‘Who’s that?’ And I would say ‘It’s my auntie’.
Kate, speaking on her Blended podcast, replied: “I think that your feelings were made clear. You were like that, which is by the way completely expected, a new woman’s come into your house, you’ve been through a lot. But also at times you were very loving.”
Kate said only once had any of her stepchildren said to her face that she was not their mum – when Tate said it in a car. She said: “I got really upset, but straight away you were like ‘No, no, I didn’t mean it’.”
Both Kate and Tate agreed they used to “butt heads” quite often. Tate said: “It’s because I felt like you were trying to tell me what to do. And I felt ‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’ Especially when dad wasn’t there.”
Kate, 35, said: “Don’t I know it. And then when dad was there you’d be back normal. And the minute dad would leave I’d be like ‘What is going on?’ “
With his dad also in the conversation, Tate said: “When you (Rio) were away I knew Kate was like a weak link. I knew that I could almost, not do what I want, but I knew that you (Kate) felt awkward.
“Not plotting, but we knew that we could like win a little bit. We assumed that we’d be able to win so we’d try it, try it, but we probably wouldn’t get away with it all the time. You gave us a sense of hope that we’d win.”
Despite the family negotiating their upheavals and now having good relationships, they admitted their experience would deter them from being involved in such complications again.
Tate said: “I would preferably not be a stepdad. I wouldn’t do it and I wouldn’t advise Tia to do it or Shae to do it.”
Rio said: “If Tia came in the house and said ‘Listen I’ve met a fella, he’s 13 years older than me, and he’s got two kids with another previous relationship, what do you think dad?’ “No – because the drama that we’ve all been through is long. To think that Tia might have to go through all that to get to a happy place.”
But he added: “At the end of the day, if she says ‘This is it and this is what I want to do’ in the end you’ve got to support her, but I would have done everything to try and stop her.”
Tate also told how after Rio married Kate he and brother Lorenz struggled over the prospect of the couple having their first child together. Asked how he felt when Kate became pregnant, Tate said: “At the time I was alright with it, but before that, when me and Lorenzo used to talk about it, (I’d say) ‘If they ever have a kid, I will hate the kid, I’ll do that, I’ll do this, I’ll do that, we’d lock it in a room’.
“At the time I never thought I’d love Cree and Shae the way we do now. I never thought we’d be normal, like how it is now. By the time you (Kate) were pregnant I was probably over that. I was 13 or 14 at the time. I was a bit shocked that it actually happened, I was a bit like ‘Wow, that was a bit quick’. But once i got used to it I thought it was fine.”
But he also admitted he had feared that when Cree and Shae grew older, if ever there were sibling disagreements, they would bring up that fact that the three older children’s mother wasn’t there.
He said: “I always remember thinking ‘They’re going to have a mum and we’re not’. Not that it’s going to be a competition. I thought at the time they’d grow up quicker and they’ll be on our level quicker, like if we ever got in an argument that’s what they’d say.”
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