90 Day Fiance: The Other Way and Love In Paradise couple Daniele Gates and Yohan Geronimo appear willing to share most all of their relationship issues with millions of viewers. However, one topic they seem to skirt around on camera is the fact that Daniele has a son.
In her intro on Love In Paradise Season 2, Daniele talks about the fact she is a mom. “When I was 21 years old, I became a single mom,” she reveals. “After I had my son, I would choose men who I knew would be a good father figure, but not necessarily a good partner to me. So, after a series of really bad relationships, I took a five year break to really focus on myself.”
Daniele adds that her son was a young adult at the time, and “he kind of had his own life.” That allowed Daniele to do a lot of traveling — including four trips to the Dominican Republic in just a few years.
Daniele’s son’s “own life” he was putting a lot of time and effort into was becoming an actor and a stand-up comedian. Thomas Vaethroeder’s efforts looked like they might pay off when he was cast in the lead role of a Fox comedy pilot titled Prodigy/Bully in March of 2012.
The pilot was screened by Futon Critic, and reviewer Brian Ford Sullivan had some very positive things to say about the episode — and Thomas.
The plot in a nutshell: “America’s education system is in two words: a shambles,” Lawrence McCarthy (Don Lake), headmaster of the esteemed Kaltschmidt School, notes in the opening to our faux documentary. Take fifth grader Audie Murphy (Thomas Vaethroeder), a rough and tumble kid from Lowell, Massachusetts. He’s an unabashed bully at Spiro Agnew Elementary School, who taunts his classmates without blinking an eye and spends the bulk of his time in detention. But he’s also something of a budding genius: whether it’s spray painting math equations on buildings or creating havoc with a potato cannon. And while Spiro Agnew is likened to a prison where said skills are squandered, Kaltschmidt is a much more fostering environment. And so when an endowment fund for underprivileged kids gives Audie an opportunity to attend the latter, he’s more than happy to take it.
What works: It’s got a genuinely funny hook and a cornucopia of amusing performances, especially from Vaethroeder and his classmates…
Unfortunately, Prodigy/Bully wasn’t picked up. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any additional movie or television credits for Thomas since Prodigy/Bully.
Daniele Gates’ son doing stand-up comedy
In addition to being an actor, now-21-year-old Thomas Vaethroeder is also a stand-up comedian. He has a couple videos from his recent sets available on YouTube.
One of those clips features Thomas’s set at the Broadway Comedy Club in August of 2022. The clip will be of particular interest to 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way fans as Thomas jokes about his mom Daniele being on the show!
Here’s the full video, queued up to the moment when Thomas starts talking about Daniele:
Thomas starts off joking about the time he was at the beach with Daniele and he was kicking sand on her. She threatened to make him eat sand if he continued, but he was not deterred. The story ends with Daniele’s knee on Thomas’s back as she pushed his head on the ground. “And she said, ‘Chew!'”
Next up was Thomas’s bit about Daniele being on 90 Day Fiance and her fondness for Dominicans.
“You guys know that show 90 Day Fiance?” Thomas asks. “If you haven’t heard of it, the concept [is] two people meet each other, they’re in a relationship for a brief time, and then one of them gets engaged to the other for a green card.”
Thomas then makes the reveal about Daniele. “My mom is on this show right now! The way it worked in her case, she went on vacation, she’s minding her own business, a Dominican jumped out of a bush! And the rest is history.”
Thomas admits he hadn’t watched the show, then shares a little bit about Daniele’s dating history. “I know that my mom loves Dominicans. That was not a shock to me. I knew that from experience,” he says.
“I grew up with a lot of Dominicans. My mom was with another Dominican guy for a while, and he raised me for a couple years.”
Below is another clip of Thomas performing at the Broadway Comedy Club from a few weeks prior. Unfortunately, he doesn’t mention Daniele in this one.
I assume that either Thomas or Daniele (or both) were VERY opposed to him filming for 90 Day Fiance because you know producers would have wanted that story line! Thomas showing up in the DR would have been much better than one of Daniele’s random exes.
Plus, Thomas lives in New York, so a Tell All appearance would have been a no brainer! And given his acting experience combined with his stand up skills, I’m guessing he would have been quite entertaining!
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
