Ben Stiller is opening up about his and Christine Taylor’s decision to separate back in 2017. The couple ultimately reconciled sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When we separated, it was just having space to see what our relationship was, what my life felt like when we weren’t in that relationship, how much I loved our family unit,” he told the New York Times in a new profile.
“It was like three or four years that we weren’t together but we always were connected. In my mind, I never didn’t want us to be together.”
The “Dodgeball” and “Zoolander” co-stars married in 2000 and are parents of daughter Ella, 22, and son Quinlin, 19.
“I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but COVID put us all together in the same house,” Stiller, 59, went on.
The “Severance” director explained that it was “almost a year of living in the same house before we were actually together” again.
“But I’m so grateful for it, and I think not that many people do come back together when they separate. There’s nothing like that, when you come back,” he noted. “You have so much more appreciation for what you have, because we know we could not have it.”
After their reunion, Stiller told Esquire in Feb. 2022: “We were separated and got back together and we’re happy about that. It’s been really wonderful for all of us. Unexpected, and one of the things that came out of the pandemic.”
Taylor, 53 meanwhile, spoke about reconnecting with Stiller during an appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show” in March 2023.
“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 said at the time. “It was not something we took lightly, either.”
“I think we have these growth spurts — even as adults — and I feel like we needed just some time to figure that out,” she continued.
Despite the split, they remained a “family unit” and “found” their way back to each other when they decided to “hunker down” with their kids under the same roof amid the pandemic.
“It was a really special time for us, for the family,” she gushed. “It just happened organically and naturally.”
