‘Hopelessly in Love’s’ Larry Birkhead explains the difficulty of raising Anna Nichole Smith’s daughter

Lifetime(LOS ANGELES) — The latest episode of the Lifetime docu-series Hopelessly in Love, premiering on Friday, tells the love story of the late model and TV personality Anna Nicole Smith and her partner Larry Birkhead, the father of Anna Nicole’s now-13-year-old daughter Dannielynn.

Birkhead told ABC Audio what it’s like raising the teen, who’s had to deal with the media attention surrounding her mother’s tragic death in in a Hollywood, Florida hotel room in 2007, as a result of an overdose of prescription drugs.

“I don’t make it heavy on her because, you know, it’s such a big responsibility raising a teenager already and trying to be positive in a world that’s crazy and social media and how people can be,” he explains. “She’s done a good job of kind of guiding herself a little bit. And then I’m there for support and to answer anything that she might need.”

Birkhead described how it felt to see footage of the first time he met Anna Nicole

“I was excited to share that, only not just with the viewers, but also with my daughter and to have her see that,” he says.

However, Dannielynn didn’t share in Larry’s excitement.

“I will tell you she wasn’t as excited to see her mom and dad kissing as I thought she would be, you know, she said, ‘Oh, ew, that’s yucky, Dad,’ he jokes. “But then, you know, she knows all the work that I went through, so she, I caught her peaking from time to time of me doing the editing process and things like that.” 

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