Brooke Hogan says there wasn’t one moment that completely destroyed her relationship with her late father—but there was one that changed it forever. Looking back, she says Hulk Hogan sleeping with one of her closest friends was the point where things were never quite the same again.
While speaking with Us Weekly, Brooke Hogan reflected on her complicated relationship with Hulk and pointed to his affair with her friend Christiane Plante as the biggest turning point.
“A major turning point came after he slept with my friend Christiane [Plante]. I forgive people very easily — sometimes probably too easily — and I forgave him, but something between us changed afterward. I don’t think he ever related to me in quite the same way again.”
Plante publicly admitted to the affair in 2008, saying it happened while Hulk Hogan and Linda Hogan privately knew their marriage was over. Linda filed for divorce in 2007 after 24 years of marriage, but Brooke says what happened afterwards completely changed the family she’d grown up in.
She explained that the divorce wasn’t the only thing that drove them apart. As the years went on, the relationship she always believed could survive anything slowly unraveled under everything happening behind closed doors.
“Then the divorce happened, and our entire family structure changed. Over time, things became increasingly complicated until eventually the relationship I had always believed could survive anything couldn’t survive what was happening around us anymore.”
Brooke also pushed back on the way people have viewed the Hogan family over the years. From the outside, she says it’s easy to paint people as heroes or villains, but living through it felt nothing like that.
“Public perception reduces families into heroes and villains. Real families aren’t that simple.”
She described a household that was full of love at times, but also packed with years of resentment, betrayal, fear, money, fame and unresolved issues that the public never really saw.
“There was also dysfunction, fear, resentment, enormous betrayal, money, fame, image management and decades of unresolved hurt all existing underneath the same roof.”
Even after everything that happened, Brooke says she isn’t trying to erase the good memories she has of her father. She insists Hulk was a great dad for much of her childhood, and that acknowledging the pain later in life doesn’t change that.
“I can love my father profoundly and still tell the truth about where he hurt me. I can acknowledge the wonderful things my family gave me while also acknowledging that eventually the dynamic became something I could no longer live inside. Both things can be true.”
She said the bond they built early in life was real and survived scandals, divorce and long periods of estrangement before finally reaching its limit.
“The foundation between my dad and me was incredibly strong. It survived public scandals, private pain, divorce, enormous changes in our family and periods of estrangement because underneath all of it there was a bond that was very real. As a little girl, I felt incredibly safe with my dad. I adored him. I have wonderful memories with him.”
Brooke isn’t trying to settle old scores here. She’s simply saying the version of the Hogan family the public saw was only part of the story. Now, she’s filling in the rest—and it’s a lot more complicated than people might have realized.
What do you think about Brooke Hogan opening up now? Sound off in the comments below.
