Cuba Gooding Jr.’s son Mason recalls wanting to be ‘so small’ he could ‘disappear’ as a kid

Raechal ShewfeltThu, July 30, 2026 at 12:20 AM UTC

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Mason Gooding in July 2026Credit: Michael Buckner/GettyKey Points -

Mason Gooding, the son of Cuba Gooding Jr., said he wanted to be “so small” as a child.

A former football player in school, the Scream 7 actor has since become big on fitness.

He explained that he made the decision to lose weight when he was in college.

At 29, actor Mason Gooding, the son of Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr., is proud of his fitness now, but that wasn’t always the case.

The star of Scream 7 and Love, Victor recalls a time when he would discuss his weight with people — the former football player estimates he weighed 300 pounds by the time he was 17 — and feel helpless to say what he wanted.

“I didn’t know how to articulate a desire to simply want to like disappear,” Gooding said Tuesday on the Wildmenpodcast, “to be so small that I fold in on myself and not be perceived by other people.”

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The son of the Jerry Maguire star and ex-wife Sara Kapfer, the younger Gooding said he had made a decision to change things within a few years.

“Once I got to college, I was like, ‘I’m going to lose weight because this is a new chapter of my life,’ and it was an unfortunate routine of not eating and then overworking and then things that ultimately led to maybe being less weight but being certainly less healthy as well,” Gooding said. “And then I discovered a love for physical activity or self-improvement.”

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He worked with a trainer — who got him more into boxing, which he had done since he was a kid — and a nutritionist to help him physically transform in time to play physically demanding parts, such as jock Chad Meeks-Martin in the Scream franchise.

“I would say it was a two-year span from when I met them in like 2021, till I got on set for Scream 6, where I was like, 'I feel like the kid in me would be proud of who I’ve become, at least physically,'” Gooding said. “And then you take time and you you start to poke around under the hood psychologically and you’re like, ‘Oh, there is definitely still stuff to learn.’ So, I got to a point maybe last year where I feel like I was able to say I’m proud.”

Mason Gooding with dad Cuba Gooding Jr. in 2012Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Gooding, who said he studied psychology in college, said his mother had tried to teach him lessons on self-improvement when he was younger, but they “just didn’t quite land.”

He looks at fitness as a way to be a better person overall.

“I realized that pursuing the idea of being a good man, which I like to think we all do every day,” Gooding said, “in order to be that good man, you have to first be better.”

Watch the full conversation above.

on Entertainment Weekly

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