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Shailene Woodley didn’t want to say much about Aaron Rodgers in a new interview because, she said, thinking about her relationship with the controversial NFL quarterback “always makes me cry.”
During an overnight stay in Malibu with a reporter for magazine Buitenthe 33-year-old actor and environmental activist also said that her relationship with Rodgers, which reportedly began during the COVID-19 pandemic and ended in February 2022, was “not right.”
“But it was beautiful,” she added in the interview published Tuesday.
Later in the conversation, Woodley also alluded to how difficult the relationship became and how devastated she was when it ended. She and Rodgers reportedly started dating during the pandemic lockdown in July 2020, around the time he ended his two-year relationship with race car driver Danica Patrick. They revealed their engagement in 2021.
“I experienced something terrible and traumatic in early 2022,” Woodley told Outside later in the conversation. Yes, the “Divergent” star wasn’t specific about the “terrible, traumatic thing” here, but Outside noted that her engagement to the former Green Bay Packers quarterback was called off in February.
“I felt like I was losing my soul, my self, my happiness and my joy,” Woodley said. “I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete detachment from the soul.”
Woodley also said she chose to stay in a “toxic situation” because she empathized with “someone else.”
“Empathy,” she says, “kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone.”
The “Big Little Lies” actor was profiled as Outsider of the Year for Outside magazine.
In an earlier interview, Woodley said candid about ‘the darkest, most difficult time in my life’ takes place in the fall of 2021, a time that coincided with the final months of her relationship with Rodgers and during which he sparked national controversy by ranting critically about the COVID-19 vaccine.
In a 2023 interview with Net-A-Porter’s Porter magazine, Woodley talked about dating “someone in America who was very, very famous”, without mentioning Rodgers by name. In the fall of 2021, she also filmed the series ‘Three Women’. But she said it was difficult to concentrate on her work.
“It was winter in New York and my personal life was (expletive), so it felt like a big pain bubble for eight months,” Woodley told Porter magazine. “I was so grateful that I could at least go to work and cry and process my emotions through my character,” Woodley said.
In early November 2021, Rodgers severely damaged his public image as a popular NFL star by delivering an angry anti-COVID vaccine tirade on “The Pat McAfee Show.” The reigning Most Valuable Player was subsequently accused of being an arrogant, narcissistic lunatic with a persecution complex after claiming he was the victim of “the woke mob” and that the media had launched a “witch hunt” to capture him whether he had been vaccinated.
Unfortunately for Woodley, she became embroiled in Rodgers’ controversy, primarily by defending him in ways that were considered tone-deaf as public health officials had raised serious concerns about the potential harm caused by Rodgers’ anti-vaccination statements. in the midst of a global pandemic. Woodley took to social media to post snarky, expletive-laden and even sexually suggestive Instagram defenses of Rodgers.
The following month, a source close to Woodley and Rodgers told People that they were trying to make their relationship work, while another insider said that they “disagreed on a lot of things,” including politics, but that they were trying to keep the peace . by not debating these issues.
But the likelihood of a rift became clear when the Chico-raised Rodgers didn’t thank Woodley or even mention her name when he won his third NFL MVP award in early February 2022.
Reports soon followed that they had ended their engagement. Rodgers then reappeared on “The Pat McAfee Show,” saying he didn’t regret speaking out about the COVID-19 vaccine, but he did regret the impact those comments had on his had loved ones.
Rodgers now the controversial quarterback for the losing New York Jetsthen apologized directly to Woodley – or “Shai” – and others, saying he was “deeply sorry” for the backlash they encountered.
A year later, Woodley acknowledged to Porter that having a quote-unquote “famous” relationship was becoming difficult.
“I honestly never really noticed that millions of people around the world were actually watching these things and paying attention to them,” she said. “I looked at the scrutiny, at the opinions, at the desire for people to know my life, his life, our life – it just felt violating in a way that was fun before. I’m a very private person, and so I found that every time I posted something, I immediately felt like I was sharing too much of who I am with people I didn’t necessarily trust.
Originally published:
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