Jessica Simpson Won't Talk About Dad Joe Simpson's Sexuality

Even though Jessica Simpson dished about her ex-boyfriends and addiction struggles in her new memoir, Open Book, there’s one topic she won’t touch upon — her father Joe Simpson’s sexual identity. “That’s not something we talk about. That’s not my story to tell,” the 39-year-old told the Los Angeles Times after they asked if her 61-year-old father was exploring his sexuality.

The “With You” crooner got candid about where she stands with her dad now — they have had a contentious relationship over the years — in the explosive memoir and revealed he brought a man as his date to her wedding to Eric Johnson. “My father called me three days before we left for the wedding to tell me he was bringing his friend Jonathan, a young model he often shot for his new photography business,” she wrote. “’He wasn’t on the list,’ I said. There was a pause. I reminded myself that I needed to accept my father for who he was as he worked it out in real-time.”

Jessica Simpson Wearing a Black Dress With Her Dad Joe Simpson — Sipa/Shutterstock

Joe and Tina Simpson divorced in 2012 after over 30 years of marriage, and in her book, the blonde beauty — who shares Maxwell, 7, Ace, 6, and Birdie, 10 months, with Eric, 40 — admitted she was upset when she learned they were no longer together. “They had been married for 34 years, and I had a hard time being around them together since they’d stop loving each other,” she wrote.

Unfortunately, Joe told Jessica the divorce bombshell when she was pregnant in the hospital with daughter Maxwell. “I was blindsided by this news, which triggered his natural salesmanship. He pitched it to me as a positive thing, ‘You gave me the confidence … You gave me the way out.’ Great, I thought to myself, ‘I broke my own heart.’ Dad moved on quickly, and maybe he’d planned it so long that he had a running start ahead of my mother.”

After the former minister was spotted with his friend, he took to Twitter to clear the rumors. “More misinformation in the news,” he wrote at the time. “The guy in the pics is my modeling client. He was in Miami taking agency meetings. That’s it!!”

The Texas native also gave details as to what happened after she fired Joe as her manager. She “had [to] do it five times because he would not accept it,” she wrote. “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 the ownership of my own career.”

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Ultimately, Joe and the fashion designer were able to reconcile after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016. “I was most scared to show my father [this book],” she noted. “He wrote me yesterday, ‘I wish I could have held you more in so many of those dark hours,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me for being a better manager than a father.'”

“I told him he was the best father I could ever have had,” she wrote. “’I wouldn’t change any moment.’ It’s true. I wouldn’t change a single thing about my story because I finally love who I am, and I can forgive who I was.”