Will Arnett on his divorce from Amy Poehler: ‘I pulled over to the side of the road and cried for an hour’

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Arrested Development star Will Arnett has opened up about his separation from Amy Poehler.

In 2012, Arnett and Parks and Recreation actor and comedian Poehler announced that they were splitting up after nine years of marriage. They divorced in 2016 to the shock of fans, many of whom had thought of their union as the model of a perfect relationship.

“People talk about you like they know you and they talk about your relationship as if they know what’s going on,” Arnett told The Guardian in a new interview.

“So imagine how weird that is. 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.’”

At the time of the separation, Arnett was filming season four of Arrested Development. He described the shoot as “almost excruciating” and “just brutal, brutal, brutal”.

He said: “I was driving to the set one day and I pulled over to the side of the road and cried for an hour.”

Arnett spoke fondly of Poehler, with whom he shares two sons. “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.”

Arnett is currently starring in the Netflix series Murderville, a US remake of the BBC’s Murder in Successville, out now.