Jessica Simpson seemed to diss her ex-husband Nick Lachey in a sprawling new interview that spanned everything from Ozempic rumors to affair speculation and everything in between. When asked by Bustle about the public’s favorable impression of him during their MTV reality show’s run between 2003-2005, she offered up a zinger. “It’s amazing what publicity can do,” she said, seemingly shading the Love Is Blind host.
For the cover story, which was published on Thursday, July 6, she was also asked about previous admissions regarding a past romance with a very famous and religious “movie star” who had a girlfriend and made Jessica feel “like a call girl.” The comments were made in an Amazon-published essay entitled Movie Star as a supplement to her 2020 memoir Open Book. When the outlet dropped the name Mark Wahlberg, she simply laughed and declined to ever identify the man she had the alleged relationship with. “There’s a lot of Catholics out there,” she said. Jessica ultimately married Eric Johnson in 2014 and has since welcomed three children with him — Maxwell, Ace, and Birdie.
Elsewhere in the interview, she confessed that she felt the MTV reality hit had empowered her in a surprising way. “What gave me control was people seeing me vulnerable on Newlyweds,” she said. “My power is in my vulnerability.” As for the notion that reality shows simply engineer the content, she asserted that what you see is what you get on Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica. “That’s me,” she said.
She also asserted that she’s still the same person she was during the show’s early to mid- 2000’s run. “I’m still that person,” she said, noting that her children now unearth clips via YouTube. “Honestly, if Eric told me I had to do all the laundry, I would still throw it over the banister and throw a hissy fit.”