Anna Faris has delivered a candid and sharply honest reflection on her split from Chris Pratt, after largely avoiding public discussion of the breakup for years.
Faris and Pratt eloped in Bali in 2009, later welcoming their son Jack in 2012. The couple separated in 2017, with their divorce officially finalized a year later.
Throughout the end of their marriage, the former pair kept details of the breakup largely private while focusing on co-parenting their son. In time, both moved forward and found new relationships.
Now, Faris is opening up about the emotional strain she endured, not only from the divorce itself but also from the intense spotlight that surrounded it.
“I was feeling sad. Sad,” she told Variety. “I do feel like I had enough gumption, enough of a core, and I have tried to be careful about how much Hollywood infiltrates, but now I’ve been on a spectrum of fame for 26 years, so I would be naïve to think that it hasn’t shaped who I am at this point. But, f***. The scrutiny.”
She also shared that working on her advice podcast Unqualified, which she first launched in 2015, became a source of support as she navigated that difficult chapter.
Anna Faris offered a blistering account of her divorce from Chris Pratt, after keeping the subject firmly out of the public eye for years; pictured 2015
Faris and Pratt eloped to Bali in 2009 and welcomed their son Jack, 13, in 2012; the family are pictured in April 2017, four months before the couple separated
Faris, pictured this month at the Scary Movie premiere, has finally discussed the emotional turmoil she suffered from not only the divorce but also the public attention it drew
‘I’m lucky that at that time I had my podcast,’ she said. ‘That goes back to the talk radio. I wanted, like, four people to listen and to build my own secret community. I wanted an avenue outside of Hollywood as a way to connect with people.’
Faris acknowledged that she ‘didn’t disclose a lot on the podcast, but I always felt like I could if I needed to. The podcast helped me a lot during that time, and it made me think: I know I could be happy if I’m writing, because I’ve always loved that, and maybe that’s an avenue to make money. I was thinking of a version of retirement.’
In 2017, the year her marriage to Pratt imploded, Faris released a book named after her podcast that was a combination of advice and memoir.
Although the book was written before her marital separation and featured a foreword from Pratt, it was published two months after she and Pratt announced their split.
Pratt has since married Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter Katherine, with whom he has three further children – Lyla, five, Eloise, four, and Ford, one.
Meanwhile Faris found love again in the form of Ted cinematographer Michael Barrett, with whom she held a courthouse wedding in 2021.
The first time since their divorce that Pratt and Faris were publicly spotted in the same location was last June, at their son’s middle school graduation.
Then, on the day before Thanksgiving, the exes were seen hugging in front of Katherine at a charity event at St. Monica’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles.
They drew a veil of privacy over the dissolution of their marriage as they co-parented their son, and they eventually found love with other people; the couple are pictured in 2017
Pratt has since married Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daughter Katherine, with whom he has three further children – Lyla, five, Eloise, four, and Ford, one
Katherine was not seen interacting with her husband’s first wife, but could be glimpsed observing their interaction at a short distance.
Pratt’s parenting of Jack came under fierce scrutiny in 2021, when he faced a deluge of blowback over an Instagram post praising Katherine.
‘She’s given me an amazing life, a gorgeous healthy daughter, she chews so loudly that sometimes I put in my ear buds to drown it out, but that’s love!’ he wrote.
An army of online scolds interpreted the ‘healthy daughter’ line as a dig at Jack, who suffered a spate of medical problems after his premature birth.
Shortly after the furor, Pratt candidly discussed the toll that the ‘f***ed up’ backlash had taken on him, in an interview with Men’s Health.
‘My son’s gonna read that one day. He’s nine,’ said Pratt. ‘And it’s etched in digital stone. It really f***ing bothered me, dude.’
The Jurassic World star confessed: ‘I cried about it. I was like, I hate that these blessings in my life are – to the people close to me – a real burden.’
