Tiffany Chen gave birth to Gia Virginia Chen-De Niro in April, her first child and the actor's seventh.
World, meet Gia Virginia Chen-De Niro!
The newborn daughter of Tiffany Chen and Robert De Niro made her TV debut during her mother's CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King that aired on Friday. The baby made a brief appearance during the near-10-minute conversation, during which the world-champion martial artist opened up to King about the scary postpartum complication she endured after giving birth to the 79-year-old Oscar-winning actor's seventh child.
When asked how her daughter has changed her life, Chen responds that the 3-month-old has "made it more fun" for her and her Oscar-winning partner.
"Gia, what's your favorite Robert De Niro movie?" King jokingly asked the baby during her visit, to which Chen replied, "The one in the delivery room, where I'm the star!"
De Niro originally shared the news that he and Chen had welcomed a baby in May 2023, correcting an ET Canada interviewer at the time who said he was a father of six, sharing, "I just had a baby."
A rep for De Niro later confirmed the happy news to ET.
A few days later, on CBS Mornings, King shared the first photo of De Niro and Chen's daughter. King also revealed that little Virginia is named after De Niro's mother.
During Friday's interview with King, Chen recalled meeting De Niro on the set of his 2015 film, The Intern, where she was hired as his onscreen Tai Chi instructor.
"I've had better students, but he was OK," Chen joked when King asked how he did on set. "He had a lot of other stuff to do in the movie!"
And of what she considers the best thing about De Niro, Chen gushed, "How much he loves his family."
In the same conversation, Chen opened up about her Bell's palsy diagnosis, a medical condition that causes facial paralysis, after welcoming her first child.
"When I went home, I started to feel like ... my tongue felt strange," she recalled. "It felt a little tingly, just starting to get a little bit numb. And then I realized my face just felt weird. I didn't know what the feeling was that I was having. It felt weird."
"Did it look different to you? Your face when you looked in the mirror?" King asked Chen. "Yeah," she responded.
"Everything was starting to fall down on itself, like, my face was melting on itself. A week after giving birth, that was when it all hit, and I called my doctor. I was trying to eat. I went to put a fork of food in my mouth and everything came out. I couldn't eat," she added. "And I was starting to slur. So I said, 'There's something really going on here.' They said, 'Go right to the hospital.' [They] admitted me, and I lost all facial function the minute I got into the hospital."
According to the Mayo Clinic, Bell's palsy is "a condition that causes sudden weakness in the muscles on one side of the face. In most cases, the weakness is temporary and significantly improves over weeks. The weakness makes half of the face appear to droop. Smiles are one-sided, and the eye on the affected side resists closing." The exact cause is unknown.
Speaking with ET after their interview, King shared that her talk with Chen came to be thanks to a chance real-life meeting during which the new mom revealed her diagnosis. "You can see it a little bit on her face. She said it was really a bad situation because both sides of her face dropped and she said it was hurtful and unkind that you read the headlines [asking], 'What's wrong with her? She's never smiling, she looks so somber, why does she look so mean?'" King recalled.
"She said, you know, people have no idea what women are going through. And so she just wanted to share the story of Bell's palsy and how this can happen in your pregnancy," the journalist explained, noting that Chen shared how acupuncture has worked for her case. "Her message really is, 'Everybody, can you just be kind and can you just understand that we could all be going through something?' I [asked], 'Did it hurt your feelings?' And she goes, 'No, I'm not gonna say it hurt my feelings, but it was upsetting to me that people just make assumptions when they don't know you. And as women, we just need allies to give us some grace and some understanding.'"
Noting how private both Chen and De Niro are, King pointed out that Chen even agreeing to the interview was a sign of how important the matter is to her.
"What was interesting to me about her was, she said, 'Look, I can take it, I have a very tough skin,'" King said of the award-winning martial arts instructor. "She's a bada**, she's won many awards, you know? Don't mess with Tiffany. She said, 'I can take it, I have very tough skin, but what gets to me is other women who may be suffering [from] Bell's palsy after pregnancy that don't want to leave the house, they don't like how they look. They're embarrassed, they think people will judge them.' She said, 'I just wanted women to know it's OK. Most times, you will get through it. Normally it's not permanent. It can take some time... I want women to know that. Please don't be ashamed, please don't huddle in your house, please come out, it's all right.' And I love that, she wants to empower and help other women with that message."
The actor was present for King and Chen's interview, although the CBS Mornings host said he didn't want to take the attention away from his partner.
"He did not want to be on camera, that's also something, he [said] 'cause this is her story. He really wanted it to be her story told in her terms, in her way, but he came there to support her," King shared.
De Niro is also a dad to Drena, 51, and Raphael, 46, with ex-wife Diahnne Abbott, as well as 27-year-old twin sons, Aaron and Julian, with former girlfriend Toukie Smith. He also shares son Elliot, 25, and daughter Helen, 11, with ex-wife Grace Hightower.
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