Gypsy Rose Blanchard hopes to start a family of her own one day.
“Absolutely I want kids someday. I think that I’m going to be a good mother,” Blanchard, 32, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, May 29, while promoting her upcoming Lifetime series, Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up. “I think [my boyfriend] Ken [Urker] would be a wonderful father, and so we’ll see what the future holds for us.”
While Gypsy wants to be a mom, she’s also still healing from her relationship with her own mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard. Gypsy served seven years in prison for the second-degree murder of Dee Dee and was released in December 2023. Her former boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn, who murdered Dee Dee in 2015 after planning the crime with Gypsy, is still serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after being convicted of first-degree murder in 2018.
Dee Dee allegedly abused Gypsy throughout her childhood by convincing her and the public that she was very ill when she wasn’t. Gypsy underwent multiple surgeries that were later deemed unnecessary and used a wheelchair and a feeding tube that she didn’t require. She grew up believing she suffered from conditions including leukemia, muscular dystrophy and seizures.
“I’m going through the healing process of processing those emotions that I feel towards myself and towards her,” Gypsy told Us of her mom. “I have been diagnosed with PTSD and I am on medication for it. So then when the nightmares come, it puts me in a bad state of mind and it takes me a day to come out of that negative mindset and it takes work.”
Gypsy Rose Blanchard Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
She added that forgiving herself for her mother’s murder is “a daily work in progress” that she is “working on in therapy.”
Despite her unique history, Gypsy hopes that when people watch her story on Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, they see a human being that they can relate to.
“I think what I hope for my legacy is to show that yes, I had a very tragic upbringing. I made choices that I’m not proud of and I take full responsibility [for] those choices that I made. However, I want to be one of those stories that you read about and you’re like, ‘OK, this is not a hero, but this is not a villain. This is someone very relatable that is flawed, but also [has] been through a lot and they overcame a lot,’” she said. “I don’t want to be remembered for the crime or my actions at that time, but I want to be remembered and known for overcoming a source of hardship.”
As Gypsy looks toward the future, she has Urker by her side, whom she met through a pen pal program when she was still in prison. The pair initially got engaged in 2018 but split the following year. Gypsy went on to marry Ryan Scott Anderson in 2022 while she was still in prison. She filed for divorce from Anderson in April and confirmed her rekindled romance with Urker later that month.
Some celebrity couples have gone the distance, but others haven’t been as lucky. 2024 kicked off with a handful of Hollywood duos calling it quits. Fans were shocked when The Bachelorette couple Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo split after four years of marriage. Us Weekly confirmed on January 2 that the chiropractor filed for divorce […]
Despite the timing, Gypsy told Us that she “didn’t leave Ryan for Ken.” She said viewers will see on Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up that several factors contributed to her and Anderson’s split.
“It was a combination of a bunch of things, [for example] that I wasn’t happy and I wanted to be happy,” she explained.
Although Gypsy noted that she and Urker are “trying to take it slow,” she hasn’t ruled out getting married again.
“I definitely think that marriage is something that I’m open to again,” she said.
Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up premieres on Lifetime Monday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi