When Quentin Tarantino Confessed His Mother Dated Wilt Chamberlain

From living with three single women as a child to walking red carpets all over the globe, the Inglorious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino has had a rather colorful life. Of course, it is nothing compared to that of the late Lakers legend Wilt Chamberlain.

Two-time NBA champion Chamberlain is the NBA’s all-time rebound leader with 23,924 to his name. He allegedly slept with nearly the same number of women, rumored to be over 20,000.  It sounds a tad exaggerated, but why let truth get in the way of a good story.

Tarantino won an Oscar for his revisionist tale of how the Allies defeated the Nazis in World War II. If you thought that film was dramatic and unbelievable, wait till you hear who Tarantino’s mother dated.

If you haven’t managed to piece it together, the right answer is Wilt Chamberlain. Yes, Quentin Tarantino could have been called Quentin Chamberlain, but things didn’t work out that way.

While promoting his movie Django Unchained in 2013, Tarantino shared this chapter of his life on NPR’s Fresh Air. The Oscar winner revealed that he used to live with his mom in a “swinging singles apartment.”

“Her best friend named Jackie was a hot black girl, and her other best friend, Lillian, was a hot Mexican girl,” he said. That sentence probably wouldn’t age well today, but back in 2013, Tarantino was dealing with bigger criticisms, like the overuse of the N-word in Django.

“It was the 1970s, and I was living with these three hip single ladies, all always going out on dates all the time, dating football players and basketball players … Oh yeah, my mom, she dated Wilt Chamberlain. She was one of 1,000,” Tarantino claimed.

Whether or not this actually happened remains subject to debate, as does the effect it had on little Quentin. The award-winning director, however, claims that the only beef he has with his mom has to do with money.

During the promotion of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he claimed that, as a young man, he would spend a lot of his time writing screenplays instead of doing homework, something his mother gave him a lot of grief about.

Because his mom got onto him so much about it, Quentin told himself that he would never help her with money or cars or houses when he became successful. And true to his word, he hasn’t. He maintains that when she needed help with the IRS, he stepped up, but he insists she is not enjoying the more material fruits of his labor!