Shailene Woodley hasn’t been shy about how her split from Aaron Rodgers affected her.
Woodley and Rodgers sparked dating rumors in July 2020 and subsequently began a quiet romance. Luxury Handbag Shopping subsequently confirmed their relationship days before the football player announced that he was engaged in February 2021.
“I got engaged and played some of the best football of my career,” Rodgers shared while accepting an award. That same month, Woodley opened up about how their relationship blossomed at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
“It’s kind of funny. Everybody right now is freaking out over [our engagement] and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been engaged for a while,’” she said during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in February 2021. “He’s, first off, just a wonderful, incredible human being. But I never thought I’d be engaged with somebody who threw balls for a living.”
By the following year, however, Us confirmed Rodgers and Woodley called it quits. Rodgers later praised Woodley while addressing their split in a social media post.
“Thanks for letting me chase after you the first couple months after we met, and finally letting me catch up to you and be a part of your life,” he wrote via Instagram in February 2022. “Thanks for always having my back, for the incredible kindness you show me and everyone you meet, and for showing me what unconditional love looks like, I love you and am grateful for you.”
A source subsequently told Us in May 2022 that Woodley was “more upset” over the breakup while Rodgers seemed “to be moving on” just fine, adding, “Ultimately, Shailene was not happy in the relationship.”
Woodley has since pulled back the curtain on going through a “really awful, traumatic thing” in around the same time of the split.
“I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment,” she told Outside Magazine in December 2024. “I knew I was depressed when I looked at a tree and felt nothing. That was the lowest low of my life.”
Woodley credited her best friend — stylist Kris Zero — for helping her stay active amid the emotional time in her life.
“We’d go surf, and for 10 minutes that day I thought life could be okay again,” she added at the time. “Then the depression would come back and she’d go, ‘We’re volunteering at the horse ranch!’ And we’d find a random f—ing horse ranch and we’d clean up horse s—. We’d clean hooves and brush the horses, and for 20 minutes that day I thought life could be okay again.”
Keep scrolling for Woodley’s most candid insight into her split from Rodgers:
The Darkest Days
While filming her drama series Three Women, Woodley said she went through the “darkest, hardest time,” telling Porter in January 2023, “It was winter in New York, and my personal life was s—, so it felt like a big pain bubble for eight months. I was so grateful that at least I could go to work and cry and process my emotions through my character.”
Getting Candid
“I fell in love over and over with unavailability. I’m very open as a human. I love easy and I care easy, but I do not love lightly, and I do not care lightly,” she admitted to Bustle in September 2024. “It’s really taken me a lot of time to understand that it’s not on me to fix or heal or do anything about [a relationship] other than protect the deep care and love that I have for the world and for my people.”
She continued: “Ultimately, that has helped me walk away without the need to understand why certain things didn’t play out the way that I may have desired them to.”
Learning Some Important Lessons
Woodley opened up about dealing with “a broken heart” while filming Three Women.
“A broken heart that healed and broke again,” the actress explained to Bustle about what helped her stop caring about performing for others. “I give all of myself. I used to be a person who, if you crossed me and disrespected that, would continue to give and give. And now you cross me, I respectfully go, ‘Thank you so much for that information. Have a beautiful life. I wish you well.’ Not interested.”
Connecting It Back to Her Work
“The plot line and story of [my character] Gia are truthful to Lisa’s history but also fictional. She could relay her emotional complexities about those experiences,” Woodley told Natural Diamonds in October 2024 about bringing her real life to a role. “But when I met her, I was like, ‘Oh, you’re a soulmate.'”
Woodley recalled relating to the “microelements” of the story.
“I was going through a pretty heavy personal transition [when we filmed], and to come to work and see her face and have that grounding rod artistically and professionally was something that I’ll take with me forever,” she noted. “One of the things that causes the most suffering in my life is this feeling of existential aloneness, which is different from loneliness.”
She continued: “Three Women has become a pillar [for me] to feel less alone with my experiences and the emotional complexities of having a human heart. I hope it can offer the same thing to other women. There is room for conversations or connections to happen. It’s good to have art in the world that shares this idea.”
Still Affected by the Past
“I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because it always makes me cry,” Woodley revealed to Outside magazine in December 2024. “It was not right. But it was beautiful.”
Despite it being over a year since their split, Woodley still found herself affected by the relationship.
“I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” she said about a six-month depression, which appeared to overlap with the end of her engagement. “I really understood depression and anxiety and complete soul detachment.”
According to Woodley, she stayed in a “toxic situation” at the time because “empathy kind of kept me in this loop of feeling everything for everyone.”
