Kirsten Dunst is opening up about how difficult parenting her two sons can be without her husband, Jesse Plemmons.
“I had a real moment last night. I just went to my friend’s house. I was like, ‘I can’t parent alone tonight, I just can’t,’” Dunst, 43, said during the Monday, October 6, episode of the “SmartLess” podcast. “I took them with me.”
Dunst showed podcast hosts Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett a photo one of her sons had drawn.
“This is a picture of Kirsten inside one room with the door closed, and then her son on the outside, upset,” Bateman, 56, explained. “Did he slide that under the door?”
Dunst confirmed that he did.
“I let them sleep in bed with me when just Jesse’s not here,” she added, noting that he and the kids watched Arnett’s Lego Masters show. Dunst also offered more insight into how she and Plemons, 37, split their parenting duties while working.
“We had the summer together. It’s like, whoever’s up next,” she shared. “We’re still trying to figure it out. It’s really hard. They’re 4 and 7, and they’re two boys. It’s a lot.”
Dunst and Plemons got engaged in 2017 and welcomed their sons Ennis Howard (born in May 2018) and James Robert (born in May 2021) before getting married in 2022.
Dunst told Us Weekly exclusively late last month that the kids are supportive of the earlier movies in both her and Plemons’ careers.
“I mean, they’ve seen Jumanji and Spider-Man,” she revealed at the Roofman premiere in Los Angeles on Monday, September 29. “Every time I’m like, ‘Do you want to watch Like Mike?’ they’re like, ‘No.’ So … Small Soldiers, my kids like, too. One of my kids likes [it].”
While Jumanji, Spider-Man and Small Soldiers are Dunst classics, Plemons appeared in 2002’s Like Mike.
Earlier this year, Dunst spoke candidly about her youngest son, revealing that he had a rather terrifying health scare during a trip abroad.
“[It was like] Final Destination, where you’re imagining all the things that could go wrong, worst-case scenarios happening to your child,” she told Town & Country magazine in an August interview. “I have never seen that movie … but I know the concept. That’s how it feels to be a mother at times.”
The family had traveled to Budapest where Dunst was filming her upcoming movie The Entertainment System Is Down when Plemons had to take James back home because of the undisclosed health scare.
“It brought us together as a family in such a deeper way,” she added. Dunst noted that Ennis stayed enrolled in school abroad while her husband and son returned to Los Angeles.
In the aftermath, Dunst and Plemons allowed James to choose the location for their next family vacation. He chose the Bahamas to “go to a beach where my sandcastle won’t wash away,” she told the magazine.
Dunst previously discussed the possibility of her sons following in her and Plemons’ acting footsteps.
“Listen, if they want to be actors, I’ll support my children whatever they want to do,” she said at the New York Film Festival earlier this year.