Reese Witherspoon is opening up about the “terrifying” experience of living in Los Angeles following her divorce in 2008 because paparazzi would aggressively follow her and her children.
The actress-producer recalled instances of people jumping on her car and chasing her family down on the freeways during a recent interview with The New York Times. She shares two children, Ava Elizabeth Phillippe and Deacon Reese Phillippe, with her ex-husband, Ryan Phillippe.
She said paparazzi “would be everywhere. All over the schools and all over the cars. I remember at church once in L.A., a guy jumping on the hood of the car and on each side, three people pushing against the window banging on the door when my kids were little after I got a divorce and chasing us like it was a police chase, down the freeways. It was terrifying. It was really hard on my kids. Anxiety-producing.
“I know it feels like they’re just taking pictures, but it would be like 25 people on the side of the soccer field photographing me and Ryan to see if we got along or we didn’t get along,” Witherspoon continued. “And there’s a little boy and a little girl there.”
The Morning Show star admitted she regretted living in L.A. during that time due to the impact it had on her children, specifically.
“My kids had really bad anxiety,” she recalled. “And it was all external. You can only shield them from so much, but when they can go to the playgrounds and are on the schoolyard, it feels like the world is chaos and there are no rules. [The paparazzi] would yell things at the kids about their dad or me, that were wildly inappropriate.”
Witherspoon later clarified that she’s “not trying to garner sympathy,” but that she “just didn’t know that was what would come with wanting to be an actor” when she was younger. But she was grateful for her friendships with Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Garner, as she was able to lean on them for advice when it came to navigating a public divorce and paparazzi.
“That’s why when social media emerged, Jennifer Garner and I got on the phone and we were like, ‘Oh, my God, we can decide when people have pictures of our kids? Sign me up,’” she said.
The Big Little Lies actress also sympathized with fellow mom and star Britney Spears, as she had an even worse experience with paparazzi and was “chased like an animal.”
“I watched them chase Britney Spears,” Witherspoon said. “She had two little children and I had two little children, and I felt like it was this really unfair portrayal of her as a ‘bad girl,’ and that I was a ‘good girl.’ She was a young mother trying to figure it out, away from home, being chased like an animal, and what that kicks up inside your body and what it does for you is very traumatic.
“I just have incredible compassion for people that went through that time period and were portrayed in a certain way by the media if they went to a nightclub versus they went to the playground,” she added. “It was a very punishing time for women who were in the spotlight.”