Josh addresses the cheating at 2:00
Fergie’s “Oprah’s Next Chapter” interview aired last night. I’m not going to front like I watched it at all, I didn’t, I’m just going on the clips and quotes posted online. We previously saw a preview clip in which Fergie addressed the “rumors” that Josh Duhamel cheated on her in 2009, nine months into their marriage, with a stripper he picked up in Atlanta while filming there. The story was pretty much confirmed by multiple outlets, and the stripper went on the record with some sordid details. Josh’s response at the time was to admit being in the strip club that night, but he dismissed the woman’s claims as “ridiculous.”
Fergie didn’t deny to Oprah that Josh cheated, she just very carefully worded her statement to neither confirm nor deny that story, while explaining how they overcame that period in their marriage. She told Oprah that they went to therapy together and that those “difficult times” made them “stronger as a unit, as a partnership… Our love today is a deeper love.” It looked to me like Fergie was kind of acknowledging that Josh cheated, while not directly saying it.
Well now we know how Josh addressed it. (That video is above.) He kind of talked around it, which I don’t blame him because he was at a family dinner with Fergie while talking to Oprah. It was uncomfortable to see. He said that he’s glad that incident happened because “it put me in check and made me realize what kind of man I wanted to be… As much anger as I carried about it before, I’m actually happy that it did happen. It made me straighten my ass out.” At no point did he deny cheating at all, which honestly surprised me. Here’s more, thanks to ET Online:
Nine months after Fergie and Josh Duhamel tied the knot on January 10, 2009, rumors hit the tabloids alleging that Duhamel had a one-night stand with a stripper. Today, the couple explained how that rocky period strengthened their marriage on Oprah’s Next Chapter.
“We went to therapy,” Fergie said when asked if the couple ever thought of breaking up. “The whole thing just became a positive for us … Our marriage today — I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Duhamel expressed similar sentiments later in the interview.
“Now, I’m actually happy that all that happened, because we wouldn’t be as strong as we are now,” said Josh, who has admitted to visiting a strip club, but has always denied the cheating claims.
“As much anger as a carried about it before, I’m actually thankful that it did happen, because in a lot of ways it made me straighten my ass out,” the former Las Vegas star continued.
With those dark times behind them, Fergie and Duhamel seem to be looking toward the future which could include kids.
“Two is our number. We negotiated that early on,” Fergie said when asked if they wanted a lot of kids. “He told me he wanted five and I said, ‘I’m not going any higher than two.'”
You know, these two were surprisingly honest and open about this. Just reading the quotes, I expected to find Josh full of sh*t, but I didn’t. I got the impression that he wants to change, that he considered himself changed. I was impressed that he didn’t directly deny anything, because I really expected him to. That doesn’t mean I think he’ll be faithful throughout the rest of his marriage, but maybe he’s trying.
That video above also includes the part mentioned by ET where Josh and Fergie say they want two kids, and that they negotiated that number together. Fergie is 37. I wonder if they’ve been trying to get pregnant for a while and if they’re having fertility issues. If so, they’re not saying.
Oprah has another clip with Fergie online in which she talks about overcoming her crystal meth addiction. She’s discussed this before. She says that “therapy, soul searching” and “discovering why I took the drugs in the first place” helped her get past that period. She claimed that “feeling inauthentic” in her group Wild Orchid led her to take drugs, but she didn’t know how to break free and “got into a [drug] scene” in which she was addicted for about a year. She also describes her rock bottom (around 2:00 in this linked video) in which she says she was having paranoid hallucinations and had an awakening in a church where she told God she would quit doing drugs. It seemed a little hokey to me, but it sounded like it was real for her.
Photo credit: FameFlynet
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