I Need to Know More About Why Michael Douglas's Daughter Thought He Was a Pancake Maker

Carys Zeta Douglas is the 15-year-old daughter of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones. More importantly, though undoubtedly related, she is a budding “It” girl, according to a brief Town & Country profile that is so thoroughly excited to be a brief Town & Country profile, it’s practically tripping over itself in absurdist self-parody. According to writer Michael Callahan in the lede, “[Zeta Douglas] mentions her ardor for Häagen-Dazs, which, judging from her attenuate frame, it’s hard to imagine she ever, ever eats.” He seems to think this is a compliment?

Zeta Douglas attends fashion shows, has her own individual style according to her mother, and is able to “authoritatively discuss Italian cinematography or read biographies of the maharaja of Jaipur.” Sounds like she has it all, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t always that way. Zeta Douglas grew up both in Bermuda and the shadow of misinformation. According to a quote she gave, she once thought her father was a pancake maker. Honestly. Here’s the quote:

“I thought my dad was a pancake maker,” she says. “I didn’t know he was an actor. Honestly.”

Why did she think this? Did someone tell her this or did she make it up? Did she think her dad reported to a factory or made pancakes a la carte? If this was a charade played by her father, how much did he actually invest in it? Did he have a stand outside what I’m assuming was their mansion? Is Michael Douglas so good at making pancakes, one bite will convince you that he should have devoted his life to that instead of acting? Are pancakes so big in Bermuda that a human who devotes his career full time to making them would be necessary? Was Zeta Douglas not aware that in this age of automation, most pancake makers these days are, sadly, machines? It’s really hard to find a human who identifies in any real way as a “pancake maker,” aside from this one Mr. Pancake employee.

And what did she think Catherine Zeta-Jones was, Mrs. Butterworth?

The good news is that Zeta Douglas soon had this sorted out:

When the family moved to Manhattan it was jarring, as the serenity of the island gave way to paparazzi. “I hated it,” Carys says. “I used to get really upset. They would jump on the subway and sit right in front of me. I was, like, six. I was confused. That’s when I knew, ‘If this is going to be what it’s like, I need to focus on who I really am, and this is going to be something that’s just going to happen, and I can’t do anything about it.’”

Granted, maybe her confusion arose from paparazzi swarming around a pancake maker. But it’s nice to know that no matter what she was believing, Carys Zeta Douglas resolved to focus on who was really was. At age six.