Inside Sylvester Stallone’s bonkers reality show to rival The Kardashians as he scares off daughters’ boyfriends
SYLVESTER Stallone’s new reality TV show, which premieres on Paramount on Thursday, is set to compete with The Kardashians on Hulu.
As a doting dad, Sylvester Stallone, 76 has given his kids military fitness training, cigar smoking lessons, and warned them off finding love.
Which wouldn’t be so unusual if it weren’t for the fact he has three daughters – Sophia, 26, Sistine, 24, and Scarlet, 20.
The Hollywood legend doesn’t treat them any differently because they’re women, which can be a bittersweet experience, particularly when it comes to warding off potential partners.
In a new Paramount+ reality series, The Family Stallone, Slyis is seen refusing to accept the trio of grown women are no longer his little girls, and will even channel his famous alter ego, Rambo, to keep men away.
The 76-year-old said: “Some day they’ll see I’m helping. I’m getting rid of these creeps. Can I help choose the husband?
“I think young love is a temporary form of insanity, you do things you may regret, so I’m here to prevent that.
“My kids are still kids, I look at them as kids. I can’t imagine them having kids, it’s like: ‘Oh my god.’ That really is a seminal moment I can’t wrap my head around.
“This child who was running round in flannel pyjamas with ribbons in her hair is a full blown woman. It’s a very hard concept that she’s not your baby, but she is your baby.”
The acting superstar, who started his career in 1972, has let cameras into his LA mansion to give a warts-and-all look at life in tinsel town.
But it’s not just Sly under the microscope as fans will get to know his glamorous wife of 26 years, Jennifer.
Family life for the Stallones is chaotic, more like the hit series The Osbornes than Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and Sly’s girls waste no time explaining how their famous father meddles with their love lives.
He even ruined Sistine’s first chance at a steamy snog.
The actress explained: “Dating when you have the dad we do is rough. Bring any boy home and he goes full on Rambo.
“The first time a boy came over to meet my parents he was going in for the first kiss, I was so nervous but I was excited.
“He looks up at the balcony and he goes: ‘Oh my god, what is that?’
“It was my dad standing on the second floor balcony, back lit so you just see his silhouette. He’s so cinematic in the most unnecessary way.
“Let me tell you, this kid jumps in his car, went down the driveway and I never saw him again.”
Fast forward to last year and the LA beauty decided to get her own back by pulling a prank at Sly’s birthday lunch when she gave him a cake suggesting she was pregnant.
She proves to be just a good an actor as her dad because he falls for it and gets mad.
Cameras catch the moment he starts sweating and tells the camera operator: “Let’s turn the camera off for second so I can destroy this place. I’m going full Rambo, pal!”
Wife Jennifer has to quickly admit it’s a joke, with Sly breathing a sigh of relief: “Of all the sick things I’ve done, that takes the cake!”
But while she was doing it for the laughs, Sistine was also determined to make a point to her protective father.
She told him: “I did it because you have a hard time accepting the fact we’re getting older, we’re maturing, we’re approaching those years.
“You just need to make more of an effort, or just not scare off every guy we bring over, especially ones we care about.
“When I was little I always told mum that I was going to marry dad. I didn’t understand you couldn’t marry your dad. I always thought you were the only man for me.
“Saying that out loud…you are the opposite of my type! I don’t know what I was thinking back then. Imagine two of him in the same room?”
The Tulsa King star’s eldest daughter, Sophia, admits being part of such an A-list family is tough when it comes to finding love because men often chat her up just to enjoy the perks of having a famous father-in-law.
She explained: “Dating with the last name that I have is incredibly hard. You never really know someone’s intention when you first start dating, it’s cool to date a Stallone.
“One time I dated a guy and he was wondering how long he’d have to date me before he got court side seats…and that’s when I knew I was going to be in for a really tough ride on the dating scene.”
Sistine added: “It has been hard for my sisters and I to have a relationship, not only do we have Stallone attached to our last name, my dad is also very over protective and quite intimidating.
“But now that we’re older and currently in relationships, you’d think he’d really want to make that effort to get to know the boyfriend. And that hasn’t exactly happened yet.
“It does hurt that there’s been very minimal effort on his part.”
While he might be over protective in the romance department, it’s clear Sly has a good relationship with his three daughters.
Talking about their characters, he admitted: “Sophia is such a blessing, she’s the one that comforts us, “It’s going to be OK”, her ability to control her emotions is quite extraordinary. She’s stronger than all of us.
“Sistine, I always saw her as this shy, fragile, delicate kitten. I thought, “I’ve got to toughen this girl up”, so I’d jump out of closets, put dolls in her room and pretend they were watching her. The irony is she developed such a fearlessness, I don’t know if I did a good thing! Scarlet is a one off, she was such an unusual child, she reminds me of a lot of me!”
He’s famous for his iconic roles as boxing legend Rocky Balboa in the Rocky franchise and portraying PTSD-plagued soldier John Rambo in five hit flicks.
Taking on those roles meant he had to be in the best shape of his life, something he’s kept up even into his late 70s.
And it seems it’s something he’s instilled in his daughters from a young age with the girls admitting they were raised as “little military brats”.
Instead of dolls and dainty games, the trio were put through two hours of a strict military style training every morning before school in a bid to toughen them up.
Sophia explained: “We get this question a lot, what was it like growing up with your dad? It’s really interesting because he’d have us train every morning.
“But he wasn’t training us in normal stuff. My dad raised us like little military brats.
“We’d get up at 5:30, do ten push ups, ten clean and jerks – if you don’t know what that is, look it up on YouTube, it’s with a bar, it’s heavy and it sucks.
“Then he used to give us a golf club, once you’d swung the golf club, you’d go to the pool table. We’d throw shot put, do sprints in the back yard.
“We had chess, reading out loud and then we’d box in the kitchen.
“Somehow we’d sit at the table at seven o’clock, right before school, eating eggs.
“Just because he ate raw eggs in a film does not mean we would like a s**t load of eggs. I’d literally throw out my breakfast and he’d make me another plate of eggs.”
And as they’ve got older the training moved to more mature past times, including training them how to use guns, with viewers getting to see Sly and Sophia at their local range.
Sistine added: “I think my relationship with my dad got more exciting as we got older, he didn’t know what to do with us when we were little.
“Now that we’re older he’s sort of brought us into his world. We’ve found things in common that we like to do.
“He actually taught me how to smoke my first cigar! It just became this tradition that we did for years.”
Sly has been married three times. He had two sons with first wife, Sasha Czack, who he divorced in 1985.
Then he had a famous romance with Danish model and his Rocky co-star Brigitte Nielsen, 59, but their marriage collapsed in 1987 after just two years.
In 1988 he met model Jennifer and the pair married less than ten years later as he realised she was ‘the one’.
He explained: “The first time I met her I felt the earth move. I just knew this was someone unique and special.
“I’ve got happier as I’ve got older, Jennifer has always been nice and balanced. She’s impossible not to like, she does everything right.
“She’s a wonderful business woman, a fantastic mother and wife, the fact she can take care of me…she should win the Noble Peace Prize!”
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing for the couple.
Last August Jennifer filed for divorce as it looked like their romance had hit the rocks.
Sly even had a tattoo of the model’s eyes on his arm changed into a leopard and then covered up a second inking dedicated to his wife with a portrait of his dog Butkus, from the Rocky movies.
Just a month later the couple reconciled and their new reality series shows their romance is firmly back on track.
But the couple admit his gruelling filming schedule has put strain on their relationship over the years.
Sly admitted: “Earlier in my career the movie schedules were much longer, 130/140 days, I used to look at that like, “What an adventure, this is fantastic”.
“Now I look at it as punishment, I don’t want to be away anymore, I want to stay around the people I love.”
Talking about him being away Jennifer added: “It’s incredibly hard to be in a long distance relationship, I know because every year, sometimes twice a year, Sly goes to a different country and films.
“We’ve lost months away from each other and not being able to connect face to face is very difficult. I always get nervous to have him back.
“When you haven’t been together for a couple of weeks, it’s almost like meeting up again. It’s kind of fun because it’s fresh but then I always get butterflies when I see him.
“To me family is everything, we don’t always live in a normal world but when we’re all together, making dinner, watching TV together, it feels like home.”
Jennifer might give the image of a traditional home life, but their world is far from normal as fans will get to see in their new series.
In the opening episodes some famous faces pop up.
Hollywood legend, and one of Sly’s best pals, Al Pacino drops in for a pizza-filled catch up where the actors poke fun at each other for going grey.
And Rocky star Dolph Lundgren, who played Balboa’s brutal opponent Ivan Drago in the forth flick, joins him to celebrate his 76th birthday.
Fans will also get a glimpse into the world of Sly’s younger brother Frank who lives down the street in a house that’s become a shrine to the movie star.
The house is packed with movie memorabilia including the shorts he wore in the Rocky franchise.
Giving a guided tour of the property, sisters Sophia and Sistine reveal their nickname for their uncle is “Italian Austin Powers” because he has a four person hot tub in his bedroom.
The series, which launches on Thursday, gives fans an unprecedented look at the actor’s home life which may raise a few eyebrows around Hollywood.
But for Sly allowing cameras to follow his every move was the perfect excuse to spend more quality time with his daughters.
He said: “I’m on the road so much, I’ve probably been on the road for 60% of my life.
I looked around and said, ‘My daughters are grown up, wouldn’t it be great to just spend some serious time with them where they couldn’t escape, they’d have to be with me?’
“Having done a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong, I’ve come to one conclusion that time is your currency.
“That is the most valuable bank account you’ll ever have and you have to spend it in the right spot or you will go bankrupt and I’m talking emotionally bankrupt.
“Life expectancy is around 72, that comes out at 3900 weekends, that’s it, when you really become aware of it you become precious with your time.”
The Family Stallone launches on Paramount+ on Thursday.