Shailene Woodley Hints That Aaron Rodgers Breakup Was ‘Darkest, Hardest Time in My Life‘

Shailene Woodley won’t pretend the last year has been easy. In a new interview with Porter, the actress discussed how much she struggled last year, as her whirlwind engagement to Aaron Rodgers ended while she she was working on a new project. Woodley filmed the upcoming series Three Women from October 2021 to May 2022; Rodgers and Woodley’s breakup was reported in February 2022. Rodgers was trying to publicly win her back for some time after, with the two reported to have attended a wedding together in March 2022. But by the end of that April, Woodley was “done.”

As a source told E! at the time, “Shailene tried to give it another shot and was spending time with Aaron. But she quickly saw that everything was on his terms and nothing was going to change. There was no reason to continue and she’s done with it again.”

Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley

To Porter, Woodley discussed how challenging it was to work on the series while processing all that was happening in her personal life. “It was hard to film [Three Women] because I was going through the darkest, hardest time in my life; it was winter in New York, and my personal life was shitty, so it felt like a big pain bubble for eight months,” she said. “I was so grateful that at least I could go to work and cry and process my emotions through my character.”

She also addressed the attention on her relationship with Rodgers and how it led to her ultimately remove Instagram from her phone. “It honestly never really hit me that millions of people around the world were actually watching these things [I posted on IG] and paid attention to them,” she began. “Then, I dated somebody in America who was very, very famous,” she said. “It was the first time that I’d had a quote-unquote ‘famous’ relationship, and I watched [the] scrutiny, opinions, the desire for people to know my life and his life and our life—it just felt violating in a way that, before, it was fun. I’m a very private person, and so I found that any time I posted anything, I instantly felt like I was sharing too much of who I am with people I didn’t necessarily trust.”

Senior News and Strategy Editor

Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.