Fumbling Through 'Fatherhood,' Even With The Best Advice
Actor Hank Azaria wasn't sure he wanted to become a father.
"I am not a children kind of person," he says in the first episode of Fatherhood, his new AOL documentary series. "I feel about kids the way I feel about most people. Which is, most of them are annoying. Children are no exception — they're just annoying short people."
So Azaria set out to document his quest for parental wisdom, quizzing his friends, poker buddies and experts about why they chose to become parents.
"And in the middle of all that," he explains, "We got pregnant. So the documentary changed to: I am going to be a father. What do I do?"
The 12-part Web series includes interviews with celebrity fathers, like Bryan Cranston and Mike Myers.
But even with the best advice, parents still make the occasional mistake. Azaria tells NPR's Arun Rath that he ran into trouble trying to answer his son's questions about the tricky topics of sex and death.
"My dad passed away this past year, so death came up with my son," Azaria says. "And it was amazingly hard."
When faced with trying to explain the afterlife to a 4-year-old, he says he was scrambling for an answer and finally told his son: "Oh, you know. Some people feel that you just kind of go to sleep."
Fatherhood Episode 1: Preg & Nant