Rob Lowe's son John Owen found out about his dad's 1988 sex tape from a classmate, not his parents

• Rob Lowe's son, John Owen Lowe, said he learned about his father's sex tape from a classmate.
• Lowe said that his 1988 sex tape scandal was a factor in pushing him to become sober.

John Owen Lowe, Rob Lowe's 27-year-old son, said that he first learned about his father's sex tape when he was in his early teens from a classmate.

The father-son duo sat down for an interview with Men's Health while promoting their new joint Netflix series "Unstable." Reflecting on his youth, John Owen told the publication that he was in middle school and early high school when he started to grasp the extent of his father's fame.

"I was in eighth grade or freshman year of high school, and some kid said, 'You know, your dad has a sex tape online,'" he told Men's Health. "I was like, 'What?'"

Rob Lowe was involved in a scandal after a sex tape that he filmed with two women— one of whom was 16 years old at the time when Rob was 24 — that he picked up at a nightclub in July 1988, The Los Angeles Times reported in 1989. Rob maintained that he did not know that the girl was underage, and settled the case outside of court, Yahoo! Entertainment reported.

The sex tape, which Lowe said on "The Jess Cagle" show in 2019 was a major factor in his decision to get sober, didn't tank Lowe's career. After establishing himself as a member of the 1985 teen acting cohort known as the "Brat Pack," Lowe went on to star in "The West Wing," which premiered in 1999, "Parks and Recreation," which he joined in season two, and "9-1-1: Lone Star."

John Owen told Men's Health that even as he became more cognizant of his father's fame, his parents, Rob and Sheryl Berkoff, never sat down with him and his brother Matthew to discuss the sex tape or their lives in the 1980s.

"Wikipedia and Google took care of that for us," Rob said.