Aaron Rodgers is disputing the narrative that he wrecked Shailene Woodley’s life when their engagement collapsed in 2022, laying out his version of events on “Not Just Football with Cam Heyward.”
“I proposed to Shailene and she said yes. Now, she maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision. She could have said no,” Rodgers said on the podcast.
He said the trouble started almost immediately after the proposal. “A couple days after that, she tells me, ‘Before we get married, I gotta go f–k this guy,’ and I’m like — because her story is that I ruined her life and gave her crazy depression because I left her. But in actuality, she told me that, and then she took off the ring by March — I proposed in December — and we had a couple of times where we tried to get reunited and nothing ever happened,” he said.
Rodgers, now the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, said the relationship was effectively over before the public breakup. “There wasn’t even a relationship in 2022 to break off. She literally told me, ‘I don’t want to be with you’ after we tried some reconciliation in 2021. There’s just a lot of narrative out there that isn’t true,” he said.
He addressed Woodley directly during the podcast. “I’m actually a good partner. I don’t wish you any harm … and Shai, you left me, you took the ring off. What are we talking about regarding me ruining your life?” Rodgers asked.
A representative for Woodley did not respond to a request for comment.
How the relationship unfolded
Woodley and Rodgers were first linked in July 2020, kept the relationship private, and confirmed it publicly just before announcing their engagement in February 2021. They called off the engagement in February 2022, briefly got back together, then split for good that April.
Woodley described 2022 as a hard year in a 2024 interview with Outside magazine. “I had a really awful, traumatic thing happen in early 2022,” she said, without specifying details. “I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy. I really understood depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment.” She said she stayed in a “toxic situation” out of empathy for someone else, without naming that person.
Woodley also said in that interview that she rarely discusses her relationship with Rodgers publicly “because it always makes me cry,” adding: “It was not right. But it was beautiful.”
In a September 2024 interview with Bustle, Woodley talked about her distaste for performative behavior in relationships, tying it to a “broken heart.” “A broken heart that healed and broke again,” she said. “I fell in love over and over with unavailability. I’m very open as a human. I love easy, and I care easy, but I do not love lightly, and I do not care lightly.”
She also described how she’s changed her approach to people who cross her. “I used to be a person who, if you crossed me and disrespected that, would continue to give and give. And now you cross me, I respectfully go, ‘Thank you so much for that information. Have a beautiful life. I wish you well.’ Not interested,” she said.
Where they are now
Both have moved on. Woodley has since been publicly linked to French actor Lucas Bravo and actor Milo Callaghan. Rodgers revealed in June 2025 that he had married; he later identified his wife as Brittani, saying they first met in 2017, reconnected after his relationships with Danica Patrick and Woodley, and eloped in 2025.
