Mackenzie Phillips Opens Up About Disturbing Relationship With Father Legendary Singer John Phillips

Warning: This article discusses disturbing relationship dynamics that some may find triggering or disturbing.

In a brand new interview actress Mackenzie Phillips is opening up about her relationship with her father. 

Philips is best known for her roles on One Day at a Time, So Weird, and most recently Orange Is the New Black. Unfortunately, she is remembered for her decades-long incestuous relationship with her father, lead singer of the Mamas & the Papas, John Phillips.

While talking publicly with her sister Chynna Phillips Baldwin, Mackenzie talked about John, saying her “dad was something else. And I get a lot of criticism, and a lot of trolling online, for having forgiveness in my heart. Forgiveness, because forgiving is for me, not for the other person. And forgiving doesn’t mean I cosign or agree with what I’m forgiving him for.”

According to Mackenzie, the incestuous relationship began after her father raped her when she was 19 years old. The relationship continued for 10 years until she became pregnant.

She didn’t know if the father of her unborn baby was her own father. “The implications, the reality of that, I had an abortion. And I never let him touch me again.”

“It’s very, very complicated. And yet I am at peace.”

Chynna agreed with Mackenzie that their father was a very complicated man. “So many different levels to who he was. Obviously, he’s an amazing songwriter and, you know I loved his laugh, and yet there was this whole other side to Dad that was, I mean, kind of, like a monster.”

He had a “very, very dark, dark side,” Mackenzie added. “He was so dark, and you just didn’t know who you were going to get,” Chynna admitted. “It was very unpredictable.”

Despite her father’s actions, Mackenzie was distanced from many of her family members. Chynna, however, stood by her sister even after she came forward with the relationship.

“I was a little girl who had this larger-than-life [father],” Mackenzie continued. “I adored my father, I waited for him over and over again. I was constantly trying to get his attention, and had this deep, visceral yearning for connection.”

It was that need for her father’s attention and her addiction to drugs and alcohol that resulted in the disturbing relationship. “Over time your perception of things as they should be, the world as it is, the rules of society, becomes warped and twisted.”

“Of course, I was old enough to know better, and clearly from the way I talk about it in the book I knew better. I can’t explain this away. It happened.”

John died years later in 2001.