The two were married from 2003 to 2016.
For Will Arnett, 2013 was a year of ups and downs. In a recent interview with The Guardian, the 51-year-old actor recalls an extremely emotional moment when he was working on season 4 of Arrested Development for Netflix while also going through a breakup with Amy Poehler.
Arnett and Poehler were married from 2003 to 2016, but announced their split in 2012. They are parents to sons Archie, 13, and Abel, 11, while Arnett is also dad to 1-year-old son Alexander with Alessandra Brawn.
"Yeah, you get on with it," he says when asked about his divorce. "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."
However, back when the two were splitting up, Arnett says it was "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," he says, adding that it "was a painful couple of years, but I had to go through it, I guess."
Arnett tells the U.K. publication that one of the harder parts of his split from Poehler was the media's involvement.
"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," he explains. "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.'"
Poehler also spoke about her split from Arnett in her 2014 memoir, Yes Please.
"Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air," the 50-year-old Parks and Recreation star explained. "The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands."
Poehler said in her book that one of the worst things about dissolving a marriage is the loneliness that comes with such a decision. "When you are a person going through a divorce, you feel incredibly alone, yet you are constantly reminded by society of how frequently divorce happens and how common it has become," she wrote. "You aren't allowed to feel special, but no one knows the specific ways you are in pain."
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