Christine Taylor is opening up about rekindling her relationship with her husband Ben Stiller after a few years of separation.
While appearing on Tuesday’s episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” the actress recalled how she and Stiller reconciled during the pandemic.
The couple — who shares daughter Ella, 20, and son Quinlin, 17, — tied the knot in 2000, and announced their separation in 2017. Nearly five years later, Stiller revealed he and Taylor had reconciled.
“It was for us,” Taylor, 51, told Barrymore. “We got married very quickly after meeting each other. We knew each other six months, got engaged, we were married within a year, and then had Ella the next year.”
“Family was always a priority, but I think Ben and I both sort of started to grow in different directions. And when we made the decision to separate, it was not something we wanted to talk publicly about,” she continued. “It was not something we took lightly either. It was sort of like, we’re both at sort of this impasse of, like, let’s figure out what’s best? Like, what is best for us at this chapter in our lives? This is going back three or four years.”
“The Wedding Singer” star said she and Stiller’s “time apart” allowed each of them to “get to know who we are.” She added, “I think we have these growth spurts, even as adults. And I feel like we needed just some time to figure that out.”
However, Taylor stressed that even while they were separated, she and Stiller “always stayed a family unit” and “continued to do things together.”
And after the pandemic began, the then-exes decided to quarantine together with their two kids under one roof.
“When the pandemic hit, and we all had to sort of figure out where we were gonna hunker down, we all ended up in our house together with two teenagers, and we found this way back,” Taylor told Barrymore. “We had so much time to talk. There were no other distractions. It was a really special time for us, for the family.”
“It just happened organically, and naturally for us,” she added.
Stiller, 57, confirmed that he and Taylor were back together in an interview with Esquire in February 2022.
As Taylor noted during her appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” Stiller said he and Taylor decided that he should move back into the family home so he would be able to see their kids during quarantine.
“Then, over the course of time, it evolved,” he recalled. “We were separated and got back together and we’re happy about that.”
“It’s been really wonderful for all of us,” he added. “Unexpected, and one of the things that came out of the pandemic.”
The “Dodgeball” star went on to share details about what his marriage to Taylor is like now.
“I think we have a respect for the ways that we’re similar and the ways we’re different,” Stiller said. “And I think accepting that, you can really appreciate someone more because you’re not trying to get them to change for you.”
“Once you accept that, you save a lot of energy,” he noted. “‘This is something that works for me; this is something that doesn’t work for me.’ If you have that trust level with your partner, you know that me saying ‘I don’t like doing that thing’ is not me saying ‘I don’t like you.'”
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