Busy Philipps has opened up about her separation from husband Marc Silverstein after 15 years of marriage.
On Friday 27 May, Philipps revealed during an episode of her podcast Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best that she separated from the screenwriter in February 2021. While her two children – Birdie Leigh, 13, and Cricket Pearl, 8 – have known about their divorce, Philipps and Silverstein went back and forth on how to share the decision with the rest of the world.
"It’s been a really long time that Marc and I have been separated,” the 42-year-old actress explained in the podcast. “Our kids know, our families know, our friends know, and we really discussed how we handle it publicly."
“The truth is there’s a conventional idea of what a person in the public eye is supposed to do when their relationship ends,” the Freaks & Geeks alum continued. “It’s been very well established, right? You make a statement, you’re committed to remaining friends, ‘please respect our privacy and our family’s privacy in this time.’ But the truth is, who made that rule up?”
Philipps added that the thought of releasing a statement about their separation made not only her, but also Silverstein “truly ill”. The Girls 5eva star explained that “you can only do what’s right for you and your family, whether or not you have a public-facing life” and that “you don’t have to follow a conventional idea just because it’s been done before.” They decided that the best way to “ensure the privacy” of their children was by not involving the public when they first separated.
“We’re not fully processed, Marc and I. But we are in a place where we’ve had many conversations, and therapy talks and all of these things where we decided that it felt like it’s an okay time for me to at least say it on this podcast," she added. “We love each other, very much. We have these beautiful kids together and there are a lot of things that really work about our relationship."
The White Chicks star also discussed how they plan to co-parent their two children. The two have opted for a “nesting” method, in which the children stay in the family home while the parents rotate in and out of the house.
“Look, it’s not for everyone and obviously there’s a lot of complication and hardship within the arrangement sometimes for us,” she said about their co-parenting arrangement. “The trick, obviously, and the point is to not have that be a thing that the kids feel or see in the home.”
Busy Philipps and Marc Silverstein were married in 2007. Philipps previously revealed in her memoir This Will Only Hurt a Little that she asked her husband for a divorce back in 2016. In an interview with Parents in 2018, Philipps cited Silverstein’s lack of involvement in parenting their two children as reason why the two almost split in the past.
