Rosamund Pike is setting the record straight about the “speculation” regarding her 2008 split from director Joe Wright.
“We’d ask people to save the date,” Pike, 47, recalled during an episode of the “How to Fail” podcast, released on Wednesday, March 11. “We hadn’t had invitations sent out, and we’d had a lovely plan [for] a wedding in Italy.”
The Gone Girl actress explained that she and Wright, 53, met on the set of 2005’s Pride & Prejudice and had “a huge love affair.” Pike was 28 years old at the time and has reached a place where she can talk about the past “without a terrible knot” in her stomach.
“We were very, very in love. We had massive masses of adventures. We were very wild, and then it all fell apart,” she continued. “When it falls apart, everybody thinks, ‘Oh, my God, what is it?’ Must be an affair, polygamy, drug scandal.”
Nothing of the sort happened, according to Pike, but the public definitely thought “the worst.”
“You get the benevolent pity again, all from all angles, and it is devastating,” she continued. “It’s utterly devastating, but it’s not devastating in any of the ways that people imagine.”
Pike clarified that the reason for her and Wright’s split was “far less spectacular” than what the public believed. She claimed she simply loved someone who didn’t love her “anymore.”
Things were “awful” for a while after the split, but Pike started looking at the breakup a different way.
“Then, you realize that actually you’re free, in a way,” the actress shared. “There are so many other templates of what life can look like for a woman. There are so many other ways that love can look like.”
Pike told listeners that she “happily” has a family with longtime partner Robie Uniacke, but they’re not married. (Pike and Uniacke have been together since 2009. They share two kids.)
“For any girls out there who are ending a sort of major relationship, people say all these platitudes, like, ‘Time is a great healer,’ and it’s awful,” Pike said. “You just want them all to go away and shut up.”
She told women that “other things” will come out of a breakup, no matter how painful it feels at first.
“Then you feel cool, because actually you’ve done it your own way, and you’ve survived, which is the best part of all,” Pike said. “You’ve weathered it, and you’ve survived it, and you’re still here.”
For Pike, the “freedom” comes when you can say, “I’m f***ing still here, and I’ve done it.” She continued, “It doesn’t come straight away. It absolutely does not come straight away.”
