Shailene Woodley opened up about why she rarely discusses her relationship with her ex-fiancé Aaron Rodgers.
In a recent interview with Outside magazine, the 33-year-old actress admitted that she hasn’t “shared much” about her former romance with the 41-year-old NFL star “because it always makes me cry.”
“It was not right. But it was beautiful,” the “Big Little Lies” star told the outlet after her “eyes welled up.”
Woodley and Rodgers first sparked dating rumors in July 2020, but the two kept their relationship under wraps until going public a few days before they announced their engagement in February 2021. In February 2022, the former couple called off their engagement but briefly reconciled before splitting again that April.
SHAILENE WOODLEY IMPLIES AARON RODGERS ‘UNAVAILABILITY’ WAS REASON FOR SPLIT
In another part of her interview with Outside, Woodley noted that she “had a really awful, traumatic thing happen in early 2022.” The “Divergent” actress did not refer to the New York Jets quarterback by name though she noted that she was in a “toxic situation” at the time but chose not to extricate herself since she was “empathizing with someone else.”
Woodley said that having “empathy” has “kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone.”
“I knew I was depressed when I looked at a tree and felt nothing,” said Woodley, who is a passionate environmental activist. “That was the lowest low of my life.”
Woodley credited her stylist and best friend Kris Zero with pulling her out of her depression.
“Sometimes I was so angry at her,” Woodley said of Zero. “But then we’d go surf, and for ten minutes that day I thought life could be OK again. Then the depression would come back and she’d go, ‘We’re volunteering at the horse ranch!’ And we’d find a random f—— horse ranch, and we’d clean up horse s—.”
“We’d clean hooves and brush the horses, and for 20 minutes that day I thought life could be OK again,” she recalled. “And then the depression came back and she’d wake me up the next morning and go, ‘Let’s go on a hike and bring trash bags and clean up trash!’”
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Woodley shared that she began to recover from her depression after about six months.
Shortly after their first split in February 2022, Rodgers shared a tribute to Woodley in an Instagram post. The 4-time NFL MVP wrote, “@shailenewoodley, thanks for letting me chase after you the first couple months after we met, and finally letting me catch up to you and be a part of your life.”
“Thanks for always having my back, for the incredible kindness you show me and everyone you meet, and for showing me what unconditional love looks like, I love you and am grateful for you,” he added.
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In a September interview with Bustle, Woodley alluded to the reason behind their split as she shared her disdain for pretentious behavior.
“I’m very uninterested in the performance of people at this moment in life. I’m uninterested in the external value that we put on everything,” the Emmy Award nominee said. “I find the performance of being something else in order to receive love or acceptance or work from others to be the ultimate form of soul death.”
Woodley told the outlet that her opposition to performative behavior was due to previously suffering from a “broken heart.”
“A broken heart that healed and broke again,” she explained. “I fell in love over and over with unavailability. I’m very open as a human. I love easy, and I care easy, but I do not love lightly, and I do not care lightly.”
“It’s really taken me a lot of time to understand that it’s not on me to fix or heal or do anything about [a relationship] other than protect the deep care and love that I have for the world and for my people,” Woodley continued. “Ultimately, that has helped me walk away without the need to understand why certain things didn’t play out the way that I may have desired them to.”
“I give all of myself,” she added of her approach to relationships. “I used to be a person who, if you crossed me and disrespected that, would continue to give and give. And now you cross me, I respectfully go, ‘Thank you so much for that information. Have a beautiful life. I wish you well.’ Not interested.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to a rep for Rodgers for comment.
