Nick Cannon Became Celibate After Finding Out He Has An Eighth Child On The Way

Days after confirming that he’s expecting his eighth child, Nick Cannon revealed that he is celibate and has been since September of last year. On the Jan. 31 episode of the Masked Singer host’s eponymous talk show, he revealed that his therapist advised him to abstain from sex after he disclosed that he was expecting a baby with model Bre Tiesi, who recently divorced NFL star Johnny Manziel.

“My therapist was one of the [people] who said that I should probably be celibate because I had shared that news, that Bre was pregnant,” the 41-year-old Wild ‘n Out star said. “That was the reason why I started my celibacy journey back then. I was [celibate] because I was dealing with [this].” The rapper and TV presenter also said that he felt like his life was “out of control.”

“Honestly, the celibacy did help me through the journey of getting one with myself and dealing with this,” he said. But this isn’t the only major life event that he’s been dealing with recently. Less than two months ago, Cannon announced that Zen, his son with model Alyssa Scott, died of brain cancer at 5 months old. On his talk show, he revealed that he knew about Tiesi’s pregnancy “for a while,” even before Zen’s death, but wasn’t sure how to break the news.

“Even going through all of that, this was always in the back of my mind, like, ‘What is the right time? How do I share this?’” he said. “No one, we didn’t expect Zen to pass away ... All of the news was so unexpected.” He also wanted to “respect the grieving process” and said that Tiesi “held off making our announcements and speaking on social media.” On Jan. 30, TMZ broke the pregnancy news and shared paparazzi photos from the gender reveal.

After the news broke, Tiesi wrote on her Instagram Stories that she was “horrified that this precious moment was exploited and plastered all over TMZ.” “This was not how I’d hope to share this news especially given that I’ve been able to protect this news for almost my entire pregnancy.” Cannon, for his part, said on his show that they didn’t plan on sharing the news with the public. “We wanted to, you know, hold on as long as we can, but it happened,” he said.

In addition to welcoming his late son Zen into the world last year, Cannon had twins — Zillion and Zion — with model Abby De La Rosa in June. In December 2020, he welcomed a daughter named Powerful Queen with Brittany Bell. This was the former couple’s second child together. In 2017, they had a son named Golden. Most famously, however, he shares two children, 10-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan, with the one and only Mariah Carey.

Just because Cannon is celibate now doesn’t mean that things are going to stay that way. While he admitted on his show that having so many children is “a challenge,” he’s not closing the door on possibly having more babies after the birth of his son later this year. “I just want to have as many children as I can … provide for and be a good father too,” the host said. “I want to be the best father that I could possibly be, but I’m not counting out ever having more children.”