Brian Austin Green told his “Old-ish” podcast cohosts that they could ask him anything — and for the second week in a row, the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum didn’t shy away from his answers about his past relationships.
After getting Green, 51, to open up about dating Tiffani Thiessen in the ‘90s on last week’s episode, the actor spoke about his “toxic” relationship with ex Vanessa Marcil on the Monday, May 5, installment. Cohosts Randy Spelling and Sharna Burgess (Green’s fiancée) then inquired about his lengthy relationship with ex-wife Megan Fox.
“When we were first together, I already had Kass,” Green began on the podcast, referring to his now-23-year-old son Kassius, whom he shares with Marcil. “So she became very responsible for his well-being and was involved in all of the legal stuff that was going on with Vanessa and I, and it’s a lot at a young age.”
Green and Fox started dating after meeting on the set of Hope & Faith when she was 18 years old in 2004. He was 30 at the time.
“It was amazing, but it was so much responsibility, I think she kind of just got to a point in her life where she was like, ‘I missed out on being a kid, like, being an irresponsible kid. I jumped in at just over 18 years old with a guy that had a 2-year-old,” Green continued. “I think it became overwhelming for her. When she realized that, she wanted out quickly, which is then what made it hard for me. I understood it, but it doesn’t make it any less hard.”
After dating on and off, Green and Fox wed in June 2010.
“The first time she wanted a divorce, we had two kids,” Green said, referring to sons Noah and Bodhi. “I was sick [with ulcerative colitis]. She went to New York to do the sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I couldn’t even go with her because I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t do anything. I had to stay home and I was doing physical therapy, speech therapy and all sorts of stuff. So the first time she wanted a divorce was when she came back from that. I didn’t even have the physical ability to, like, argue with her on it and fight for the relationship.”
Green said “it killed me” when Fox ended their relationship in 2015.
“It was out of nowhere. It was the most vulnerable thing I had ever experienced in my life at that time,” he said. “I think there was somebody she had met on set then that kind of sparked her interest. And then I think that once she was back in L.A., that just quickly sort of fizzled out and we ended up just staying together and she ended up getting pregnant again.”
Fox announced in 2016 that the twosome had reconciled and she was pregnant with baby No. 3.
“Journey was born. Then we were just kind of back in the wheel … and it seemed like we were in a good place of like, ‘Oh, we’ve been through a lot together. We can do this. There’s no mountain that’s too high to climb. We’ve got this. This is all figured out,’” Green recalled on Monday. “And then when she came to me again wanting a divorce, I was devastated.”
The pair split again in 2020.
“I honestly felt at that point, ‘We got this.’ We would be doing interviews and on red carpets, and she really, truthfully came from a place of saying, ‘I believe that we’re soulmates,’ and she genuinely meant it,” he said. “We’d already been through almost 15 years of a relationship together. So I believed it. And I think she believed it at the time also. Like, I don’t believe she was just saying things to appease me at that point. It had been too long.”
Burgess pointed out that the former couple’s “really public divorce” included Fox’s relationship with Machine Gun Kelly, where Fox moved on “quickly” and “intensely” with the musician, referring to Kelly as her “twin flame” and “ultimate soulmate” in the media.
“How do you process that?” the Dancing With the Stars pro asked her partner.
“It’s funny, we talk about this all the time,” he replied. “You go through hard stuff and when you’re in it, you think, ‘What’s the silver lining of this? What good is this gonna serve? What purpose is this gonna serve?’ Because of the health stuff I had gone through — and it was four and a half years — at the point when she approached me and then the Machine Gun Kelly stuff and everything was happening, I was genuinely in a place of … ‘I can deal with this. This is not gonna kill me. … I’ll be OK.’ It sucks. And it’s really hard. And I had absolute moments of jealousy and all the normal things you go through. And like you said, it was a quick moving thing. It went from, like, ‘Hey, we should get a divorce.’ To all of a sudden it was like, ‘Hey, you know, my twin flame and this is my soulmate. And I manifested him.'”
Green recalled how the lack of celebrity news during the Covid pandemic played a part in the large interest in their split. After being contacted for comment repeatedly, he spoke out on the podcast he had at the time called “With Brian Austin Green.”
“I remember at that point when the pictures came out, Megan saying to me, ‘We’re just friends. Please, can you, on your podcast, say [that]?’ It was a little tailored to better that side because it was such a big deal,” Green explained. “I completely caved to that ’cause I loved her. I didn’t want to badmouth her even though it was a s***** situation. … I wanted the best for her, begrudgingly.”
Burgess pointed out that Fox is the mother of his children, so he wouldn’t want negative things written about her as they live on the internet “forever.” That being said, she was curious why Green didn’t clarify certain things over the years, including the misrepresentation that he “groomed” Fox when they first started dating and that he was controlling in their relationship.
“I think it comes from my dad. He’s very good at cutting emotion out of something and just being logical in his choices,” Green responded. “I really, logically understood that if I defend myself this one time, it’s never gonna stop. I’m gonna have to defend myself for who knows how long, because people are gonna believe what they wanna believe. So, to me, time is the only thing that regulates that. People spend more time seeing me not being that way and then they start questioning it and they start going, you know, ‘We’ve seen him for five years. We’ve never once seen him being controlling or hearing any other story from anyone else about.’ It’s the long game of it.”
Green “felt the same way” about his tumultuous relationship with Marcil.
“I’m just going to sit back and shut the f*** up and people are gonna find out what they’re gonna find out just because I’m not giving them anything else to do,” he said. “They’re just gonna have to find it out on their own if they’re still interested. And people have with her and people have with Megan and that whole situation. There was so much stuff — you said, the grooming stuff, the controlling stuff, it seems like that just continually lessens and lessens until I run into people now that are like, ‘Yeah, I used to think that, or that seemed to be the case,’ but they just genuinely don’t believe that anymore. And it’s not because of anything I said. It’s easy for people to say things to defend themselves. People do it all the time. ‘I did a press release, or I spoke to this, a tell-all book.’ … Those are words, man. It’s actions that truly paint a picture and tell a story.”
Green concluded that he has “no regrets” about his past relationships because it led him to Burgess, with whom he shares son Zane, 2.
“Sharna is the love of my life. We have an amazing family life, an amazing baby,” he said. “My life is nothing I ever had expected it would turn out to be. I was a shell of who I am now. … I genuinely believe what I went through is what created who I am now.”
