Will Arnett Talked About His “Brutal” Divorce From Amy Poehler
I remember thinking that Will Arnett and Amy Poehler were the perfect comedy couple, and I was genuinely shocked when they announced their split back in 2012. Now it’s ten years later, and Will is finally talking publicly about their “brutal, brutal, brutal” divorce in a new interview with The Guardian to promote his new show Murderville. Was it more brutal than Show Dogs because if that’s the case, that is brutal3.
Will, 51, and Amy, 50, started dating in 2000 and got married in 2003. They worked on several projects together, including Arrested Development and Blades of Glory. They share two sons, 13-year-old Archie and 11-year-old Abel. Amy proceeded to date Nick Kroll from 2013 to 2015, and Will’s girlfriend, Alessandra Brawn, gave birth to a son, Alexander, in May 2020. At the time of their separation, Will was making the fourth season of Arrested Development, which Netflix had revived after its cancellation by Fox in 2006, via The Guardian:
He was thrilled to be back with the cast, but the shoot was, he says “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.” At least he was working with Hurwitz at the time, who, he says, helped him to turn his pain into something “hilarious and cathartic” on the show.
Will says that being part of a famous relationship was “weird”:
“People talk about you like they know you and they talk about your relationship as if they know what’s going on. 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.’”
In Amy’s 2014 memoir, Yes Please, she imagines hypothetical self-help books for people going through divorces. One is called “I Want A Divorce! See You Tomorrow!” and she jokes that it will help exes with young children, “have a knock-down, drag-out fight and still attend a kid’s birthday party together on the same day.” The Guardian interviewer brings this up to Will, and this was his response:
He makes a small smile. “Yeah, 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,” he says.
Amy didn’t dive into the divorce in her memoir. She wrote that it was “too sad and too personal” and she didn’t like “people knowing my shit.”
Well, so the takeaway is that DIVORCE SUCKS, and Will and Amy don’t totally want to get into the details. And speaking of details about a marriage, I wish Will Arnett would get into all the details of his 1-year marriage to Penelope Ann Miller in 1994. Because: WHAT?!
Pic: INSTAR