Jessica Biel Opens up About Her and Justin Timberlake’s ‘Secret’ Son Phineas’ COVID Birth

Jessica Biel is opening up about privately giving birth to son Phineas last year amid the COVID pandemic, telling Dax Shepard on the June 14, episode of his Armchair Expert podcast that she and husband Justin Timberlake didn’t intend to keep everything so hush-hush at first. Joking that she had “a secret COVID baby,” the actress told Shepard that it was simply the way the pandemic unfolded that made Phineas’ arrival so quiet.

“It wasn’t like it was supposed to be a secret. It was just COVID happened, and then I went to Montana with my family and never left,” she explained. As The Sinner actress was about to go into labor, hospital restrictions had “just changed,” she continued, and she wasn’t sure if Timberlake would even be allowed in the room while she gave birth. “There was a moment there that there was nobody allowed at all and I was really getting nervous about that situation,” Biel explained. “But yes, he was allowed. I think if I had to be there alone, that would have been horrible. I would have been really scared.”

In July, news broke that Biel and Timberlake had welcomed their second child, having already become parents with the birth of son Silas, 6. Becoming a family of four has been an adjustment, Biel told Shepard, sharing that while the “balance of everything is very different and super hard,” it’s also been “amazing” to expand the family.

“It’s so interesting. It’s so funny. The conversations I’m having now with my 6-year-old is so cool. Like, he’s a real person saying the funniest stuff and he’s so sensitive and tender,” she explained of watching her oldest grow up. “It’s just so interesting to see that part of it happen and the little one is just cute as hell.” That being said, as her kids begin to grow up, Biel said she and her Grammy-winner husband are hoping they don’t follow in their entertainment footsteps.

“I look at these kids and I’m like, ‘Oh s—, they’re probably going to be musical. What are we going to do? Like, not let them play the piano or not let them take a voice lesson if that’s their passion?’” the Golden Globe nominee explained. “I don’t want to be that parent to stifle a dream. But man, if my kid would just be like, ‘Let’s go learn about corn in Iowa,’ [I’d be like], ‘Great.’ I would so much rather them be an engineer or something.”