The ‘Spa Weekend’ actress shares her two daughters with husband Judd Apatow

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Leslie Mann‘s daughters leaving the nest and charting their own paths “wasn’t as bad” as the actress originally thought it would be.

During her conversation on the Thursday, Aug. 20 episode of the Not Gonna Lie podcast, the Spa Weekend actress, 54, opened up to host Kylie Kelce, 34, about the “most devastating time” in her life: her daughters Iris, 23, and Maude, 28, leaving the nest.

“It was the most devastating time,” she told Kelce, who shares daughters Finnley, 17 months, and Bennett, 3, Elliotte, 5, and Wyatt 6, with husband Jason Kelce. “I mean, kindergarten was really hard and then I struggled with my kids leaving me.”

Mann went on to reveal that when her eldest daughter Maude went off to college at Northwestern University was a “really hard” time for her.

“Leaving for college was really hard,” she later admitted. “Because she was going to Northwestern, which is a flight and far, and that’s really like going out into the world. That one was rough.”

“But then, she FaceTimed me all day long, and they have really long breaks. You know, you go home for Thanksgiving for like three months because it’s like Christmas, and there’s all kinds of holidays and so they’re home a lot,” Mann added. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the doting mom shared her new trick for preparing her two daughters, whom she shares with husband Judd Apatow, for their future.

“There’s this new thing that I’m doing where I’m acting like — now that they’re a little older — I’m kind of incompetent,” she revealed. “Like I can’t do things, so that they can learn. I’m transitioning from taking care of them and doing everything to [them taking] care of me.”

“And then, they do it and they get used to doing it, and they become very competent in the world and they can like handle everything because I’m preparing them to do that,” she added.

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Apatow and Mann, who have been married since 1997, have worked together alongside their daughters on several of Apatow’s films, including Knocked Up and its sequel, This Is 40. The Apatow daughters have grown into new roles as teenagers and young adults: Maude starred on Euphoria and Iris appeared alongside her mom in The Bubble.

Mann has openly praised and joked about her daughters in interviews over the years, saying she’s “so proud” of Maude and Iris.

“They’re good girls,” she said on The Tonight Show in March 2022. “You’re given these two little babies, [and] you don’t want to ruin them with bad parenting. So it’s a lot of pressure on us parents and, looking at them now, I feel like, ‘Okay, maybe I didn’t ruin them. Maybe they’re okay.’ They’re like good, kind-hearted people. But we don’t want to jinx it.”