Jessica and Ashlee Simpson Have Family Reunion With Divorced Parents Joe and Tina
Jessica Simpson celebrated father Joe Simpson's 65th birthday over the weekend with the rest of her "beautiful family." The singer, 42, shared a "proud" tribute to her dad Monday after celebrating Joe's big day with her sister, Ashlee Simpson, mom Tina Simpson, husband Eric Johnson, and 10-year-old daughter Maxwell.
The New York Times bestselling author posed with the birthday boy and her various family members in a series of photos she posted to Instagram with a touching caption. "My beautiful family together forevermore. I am proud of us for all that we have accomplished unconventionally with pure honesty," she wrote. "I love each of you exactly as you are...unconditionally, completely, fully, entirely, and endlessly. Happy 65th Birthday Dad!!! Bein' loved by you has given purposeful soul to my life 2/18/2023"
Jessica previously opened up about the complicated relationship between her mother and father, who were married from 1978 to 2013, in her 2020 memoir Open Book. The "Irresistible" singer wrote that her dad "betrayed" her mom in 2012 after years of cheating rumors. "[My mom] had just told me what a nice time they had together on their anniversary, and she thought maybe they had turned a corner," Jessica wrote. "I thought so, too. When she confronted him, my dad began calling me, and I would not pick up."
Jessica continued that her dad went into "full denial mode," which damaged their relationship, as did her having to fire him as her manager. "The worst part was that I had [to] do it five times because he would not accept it," she said. "Too often I was circling back to people, only to find that Dad had made some move without telling me. People agreed to bad terms, thinking that was what I had demanded when, really, I had no idea. It left a lot of hurt feelings I didn't know existed, and I knew I had to make the move to go forward with ownership of my own career."
In 2014, as Jessica prepared to tie the knot with Johnson, she recalled her dad calling her to tell her "he was bringing his friend Jonathan, a young model he often shot for his new photography business." The mother of three continued, "I reminded myself that I needed to accept my father for who he was as he worked it out in real-time... I wasn't sure how to handle my father now, so I worked with the information he was ready to give me. Maybe I wasn't ready to listen, I don't know."