Aaron Rodgers breaks silence on Shailene Woodley split with explosive new claims
Aaron Rodgers has spoken out about his ex-fiancée Shailene Woodley for the first time since they ended their engagement in early 2022.
The NFL star began quietly dating the actress in 2020, with Woodley later confessing that the Covid-19 pandemic had offered the pair a unique opportunity to get to know each other without the normal pressures of public life.
By the end of that year, the couple were already engaged and in February 2021, Rodgers revealed the news after winning his third NFL MVP — though he didn't identify Woodley by name.
Over the following summer, the couple were seen at a number of public events together, and the Divergent star even spoke out to defend her then-fiancé over public backlash about his Covid-19 vaccine status.
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But following this period is where the relationship timeline becomes a little less clear.
It wasn't until February 2022 that Rodgers and Woodley announced they had called off their engagement, with the actress later claiming to have been in a 'toxic' situation.
But now, Rodgers has revealed their relationship was over long before the news came out.
Appearing as a guest on his Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Cam Heyward’s podcast, Not Just Football, on Thursday (September 10), the 42-year-old said: "I date Shailene, I propose and she says yes. She maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision, she could have said no.
"But not a couple of days after that, she tells me before we get married like, ‘I got to go f**k this guy'.
"Cause her story is, I ruined her life and gave her crazy depression because I left her, but in actuality she told me that and took off the ring by March. I proposed in December, took off the ring by March, and we had a couple of times when we tried to get reunited and nothing ever happened, and there wasn’t even a relationship in ’22 to break off.
"She literally told me 'I don’t want to be with you'."
While Woodley has not publicly responded to the most recent claims, she did speak about the breakdown of their relationship with Outside magazine back in 2022.
"I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because it always makes me cry. It was not right. But it was beautiful," she said.
Without giving too much away, the 34-year-old spoke about staying in a 'toxic situation' because of having empathy for 'someone else'.
"Empathy kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone," she said, before hinting at a 'really awful, traumatic thing' in her life around 'early 2022'.
Woodley continued: "I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy. I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment."
LADbible Group has approached Shailene Woodley's reps for comment.
Emma Rosemurgey