ET exclusively spoke with the acclaimed journalist via Zoom.
Maria Shriver may be busy with her own projects, but family always comes first!
When ET spoke with the 65-year-old author via Zoom, we couldn't help but ask her how life has been since becoming a grandmother. Shriver's 31-year-old daughter, Katherine Schwarzenegger, welcomed her first child, daughter Lyla, with husband Chris Pratt last August.
"I can just say that I feel very blessed to have a granddaughter named Lyla Maria," Shriver gushed to ET's Rachel Smith. "I'm happy for them and I'm in awe at what a beautiful mother she is, but I'm not surprised."
"It's been a gift to me," she added. "It's been a gift to her siblings, her father and to everyone who loves [her and Chris]. To see somebody step into a role of motherhood is really a beautiful thing. I'm a big believer that motherhood and parenting is the most valuable work that we do in this world."
Shriver has been helping her daughter out a lot these days, especially now while Pratt is in Australia. The actor is currently abroad to film Thor: Love and Thunder with Chris Hemsworth.
"She's blessed. I think what you learn, and what she's learned, is the importance of a village. The importance of your parents, the importance of your friends, the importance of people who you can count on," she explained. "And I think maybe that's a really great lesson for all of us at this time in our lives, is to learn about, how dependent we are on one another. Whether we're having a new baby or whether we're living alone and getting older, we're all dependent on one another."
But a new baby in the family isn't the only exciting thing happening in Shriver's life right now. The Emmy Award-winning journalist is now on her way to becoming a publishing mogul with the launch of The Open Field, her new imprint with Penguin Life.
"It's really exciting, I'm super excited," Shriver exclaimed. "The Open Field has been in my mind for more than a decade. For a long time I wanted to make it happen but the timing was never right. I was like, 'Well, maybe it's just never going to happen.' And then all of a sudden it happened, so there's a lesson in patience there, there's a lesson in God's timing there."
"I've used the Open Field metaphor for my own life to help me move forward," she continued. "I wrote my own book, I've been thinking out of the Sunday Paper and I published so many really great voices in that weekly Sunday paper. I'm hopeful that many of them will now be able to be a part of the Open Field imprint."
Shriver added that the first book to be released under the imprint will be THE CALL TO UNITE: Voices of Hope and Awakening. It's about "The Call to Unite" livestream event, which her brother, Tim Shriver, organized last year. The book also features words of wisdom from a number of other stars.
"Oprah's in there, Deepak Chopra, Charlamagne tha God, Devon Franklin ... a lot of the people that are really trying to lift us up in these complicated times," Shriver teased. "I'm a big believer in books that you can use in times of stress and times of grief, when you need comfort, when you need a voice to help guide you forward."
"I'm hopeful that these books will be those kinds of books," she added. "I know they will be those kinds of books."
Hear more on Shriver and her family in the video below.
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