UPDATE: Aaron Rodgers Responds To Danica Patrick’s “Trail Of Blood” Breakup Story
UPDATE #2: Aaron Rodgers Says He Met His Wife In 2017: “My Biggest Regret Is Not Proposing Right There”
UPDATE #3: Shailene Woodley Stuns At Emmys, Still Hasn’t Said A Word About Aaron Rodgers
Aaron Rodgers is telling his side of the Shailene Woodley split, and his version is nothing like the story that has been out there for the past four years.
Rodgers sat down with Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Cam Heyward for a two-part interview on Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast, with Part 2 released September 10.
The quarterback, now entering his 22nd NFL season, said Woodley told him something days after accepting his proposal that changed everything.
The comments come four days after Woodley won her first Emmy, taking Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series on September 6 for Season 2 of Hulu’s Paradise.
“Before You Get Married, I Gotta Go F-ck This Guy”
Rodgers said he proposed to Woodley in December 2020, and she said yes.
The engagement went public that February when Rodgers mentioned his fiancée during his NFL MVP acceptance speech.
According to Rodgers, things fell apart almost immediately.
“Then I date Shailene and I propose and she says yes,” Rodgers said. “Now she maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision. She could have said no. But not a couple days after that, she tells me, you know, ‘Before you get married, I gotta go f-ck this guy.'”
Rodgers did not name the other man.
“There Wasn’t Even A Relationship In ’22 To Break Off”
Rodgers then went after the version of the breakup that has followed him since 2022.
“Because her story is that I ruined her life and gave her a crazy depression because I left her,” he said. “But the actuality is she told me that. And then she took off the ring by March.”
“So I proposed in December, took out the ring by March, and we had a couple times where we tried to, you know, get reunited and nothing ever happened,” Rodgers continued. “And there wasn’t even a relationship in ’22 to break off. She literally told me, ‘I don’t want to be with you,’ after we tried to have some sort of reconciliation in 2021. So I’m like, there’s just a lot of narratives out there that are just not true.”
That timeline is a big change from what was reported. News of the split broke in February 2022, a year after the engagement, and it was described at the time as an amicable ending.
Rodgers says the engagement was actually over by March 2021, one month after the world found out about it.
Later in the episode, Rodgers addressed Woodley directly: “Shay… you left me. You took the ring off. Just stop with the narratives.”
He also took a shot at his exes bringing him up in the press.
“The height of their fame was when they were with me,” Rodgers said. “They get clicks when they say my name, just like the idiots on TV get clicks when they say my name, because I am a lightning rod.”
Woodley Called The Split The “Darkest, Hardest Time” In Her Life
The story Rodgers is pushing back on largely comes from Woodley herself.
In a January 2023 interview with Porter, she called the period around the split the “darkest, hardest time in my life” and said she was grateful she could go to work on Three Women and process her emotions through her character.
Woodley’s Emmy is the first of her career, and Paradise heads into the September 14 Primetime Emmys with more nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series.
Rodgers also got into his split from Danica Patrick and his marriage to his wife, Brittani, elsewhere in the episode. The full two-hour conversation is up now on the Not Just Football YouTube channel.
