Wayne Brady feared for his daughter's life when she accidentally set off the security alarm at his house
Wayne Brady feared for his young daughter’s life when she accidentally triggered his house security alarm and armed responders were called to the scene.
While talking about being Black in America, the “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” star and “Let’s Make a Deal” host, 48, recounted an incident three or four years ago when his daughter, Maile Brady, now 17, accidentally set off the alarm in his Malibu, Calif., house. Brady, who wasn’t home, said he immediately panicked and told her to run from the house for fear that whoever responded to the alarm call would think she was breaking in.
“I freaked out,” Brady said on “Access Hollywood.” “I was giving her the code [and] for whatever reason, she put it in wrong. It wouldn’t accept. ... I was so worried that my daughter could not explain in the heat of the moment: ‘Yes, it’s my house.’”
His advice: “I told her: ‘Get out of the house right now. ... Go to your momma’s house,’” which is about a half-mile away. “‘Stop arguing with me. [Run] to your mom’s house right now.’”
Brady said his own life experience led him to respond like that.
“Because I had an incident a few years ago when I lived in Sherman Oaks [Calif.],” he recalled, “and I tripped my own alarm. ... An armed response team came and I had to prove that was my house.”
While he thinks someone should have to prove it’s their house under such a situation, he still had a “fear that these people would hurt me as I’m outside my own house because it’s not unprecedented.”
Brady said he knew he could handle that as a grown man, but “I was fearful for my little girl. And I placed all that fear on her.”
Brady said his panicked response at the moment freaked Maile out. She was “screaming and crying,” saying, “‘The cops are going to kill me.’” That led to them having “the talk” about how statistically Black people are treated differently by law enforcement.
“This is the talk we had to have,” he said. “We had to really talk about this.”
Now, several years later, Brady says Maile — whose mother is Brady’s ex-wife Mandie Taketa — is the head of her school’s Black student union.
“She’s a little activist,” he said proudly, “and knows her history and she can put people in place.”
Nonetheless, he still worries about her as well as her boyfriend — especially when he drives, referring to the potential for him to be pulled over by police. Similarly, Brady worries about his 21-year-old nephew.
“Every young Black person that we send out into the world, guy or girl ... we need to arm each other with knowledge because it’s just necessary,” Brady said.
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