Angela Simmons was one of the latest guests on the Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast, and she discussed her son’s late father, Sutton Tennyson.
The 37-year-old shared that she struggled with “how to process” the murder and turned to therapy to help. Tennyson was shot and killed in 2018 outside his garage in Atlanta at just 37 years old.
“I just never knew that would be me,” Simmons told Palmer. “I mean his father’s side of the family is absolutely supportive and amazing, and so that helps. And my family is so amazing, so that helped me a lot.”
The former couple’s son, Sutton Joseph Jr., who is currently eight years old, was two when his father died. Palmer asked Simmons how she explained her ex-fiancé’s murder to their son. While the Angela’s Cakes entrepreneur initially planned to tell Sutton Joseph Jr. how his father died when he turned 10 years old, he found out via the internet. While spending time with his paternal grandmother, she alerted Simmons that her son had questions about his father’s death.
“So he gets on the phone and he’s bawling. He’s like, ‘I don’t know why he’s not here. But why would somebody shoot him?’” Simmons recalled. “The next day, he’s like ‘Someone murdered him?’ And I’m like, ‘What are you looking at, baby?’ I’m like, ‘You can’t look online because there’s too much online. I don’t even know what you’re even feeding [into].’”
She continued, “But I just hated that the internet told my son before I can tell him. […] I was so bothered because he got the story and the narrative from online before I could even like sit him down and have that conversation.”
Simmons explained what she told her son as a placeholder: “A bad guy did something to him.” She also said that when Sutton was 2 and 3, he would ask relatives about what happened to his dad.
“How do you tell a kid that’s three that what [happened],” Simmons said. “He kept asking and he would ask his grandmother separately and other people like, ‘So what happened?’ And he’s only three so you got to imagine [a] three, four-year-old asking these questions, but we’re like, ‘He’s not ready to hear this.’
The entrepreneur advised parents who are also experiencing raising a child when the other parent is deceased to “keep them alive,” which she does by showing Sutton Jr. pictures and videos of his late dad. Although his father is gone, Sutton Jr. has a male figure in Yo Gotti, whom Simmons has been dating since 2023. The three went on a vacation to Dubai earlier this year, and Simmons says the rapper is good with her son. They often chat about YouTube, gaming, and business.
