While their divorce may have been “brutal” at the time, Will Arnett says that looking back at his split from Amy Poehler, he’s still grateful for the huge role they’ve both played in each other’s lives.
In a new interview with The Guardian, the actor said that at the time of their separation around 2012 he was shooting the fourth season of Arrested Development and it was “almost excruciating…Just brutal, brutal, brutal. I was driving to the set one day and I pulled over to the side of the road and cried for an hour.” But he also credits the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, with helping him transform that pain into something “hilarious and cathartic.”
Arnett went on to explain that being in the public eye only makes these difficult personal moments all the more painful. “People talk about you like they know you and they talk about your relationship as if they know what’s going on,” he said. “So imagine how weird that is. It’s brutal with any relationship, and we have kids, and without getting into specifics, you then see stuff online, like, this one journalist wrote: ‘I’m Team Amy.’ I’m like: ‘You’re a grown person. What are you talking about? This is a breakup. This is a family. This isn’t some game.’” But, he added, “You get on with it. It’s been almost 10 years and my kids are so lucky that Amy is their mother and I’m so lucky that we’re such a huge part of each other’s lives, even more so than we were five years ago.”
Arnett and Poehler first wed in 2003, announcing their separation in 2012 after nine years of marriage. The former couple share two sons, 13-year-old Archie and 11-year-old Abel. Arnett also welcomed a third son, Alexander Denison Arnett, with his current girlfriend Alessandra Brawn in May 2020. Poehler also wrote about their breakup in her 2014 memoir Yes Please. “I don’t want to talk about my divorce because it is too sad and too personal. I also don’t like people knowing my shit,” she said. “I will say a few things. I am proud of how my ex-husband, Will, and I have been taking care of our children; I am beyond grateful he is their father; and I don’t think a [nearly] 10-year marriage constitutes failure. That being said, getting a divorce really sucks.”
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