“Let me take this moment to apologize to Giuliana Rancic. I’m not kidding about being a terrible boyfriend,” O’Connell said on the July 19 episode of ‘Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa’
NEED TO KNOW
- Jerry O’Connell apologizes to Giuliana Rancic for being a “terrible boyfriend” during their relationship while on the July 19 episode of Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa
- “Let me take this moment to apologize to Giuliana Rancic. I’m not kidding about being a terrible boyfriend,” he said
- O’Connell confirmed breaking up with Rancic via intercom and explained his reasoning behind it
Jerry O’Connell has apologized to ex-girlfriend Giuliana Rancic for being a “terrible boyfriend.”
On the July 19 episode of SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, O’Connell, 52, admitted to being a “terrible boyfriend” to Rancic, 51, with whom he dated briefly in the early 2000s, and explained the story behind their intercom breakup.
When host Kelly Ripa, 55, asked O’Connell about his relationship with Rancic, the Stand By Me actor noted that though they “had a lot of fun together,” he was a “pretty terrible boyfriend.”
In her 2016 memoir Going Off Script, Rancic alleged that O’Connell cheated on her and ended their relationship over an intercom. Ripa asked O’Connell if Rancic had “ran by him” the contents of her memoir that pertained to him, and O’Connell stated she had not.
“Now listen, in Giuliana Rancic’s defence of this memoir, I was a pretty terrible boyfriend,” he explained. “Hand up, I was not a good boyfriend.”
“Let me take this moment to apologize to Giuliana Rancic,” he said. “I’m not kidding about being a terrible boyfriend. I was the worst. I wasn’t the worst boyfriend. I was just a bad boyfriend. I was just not a great boyfriend.”
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In her memoir, Rancic wrote that O’Connell broke up with her via intercom, which he confirmed on the podcast.
“I broke up with her through an intercom because Giuliana Rancic came to my condominium and hit my intercom,” he explained. “I was not expecting Giuliana Rancic… [She] wanted entry into my condominium. Thank goodness, buzzer, gate, security. I paid a pretty hefty homeowner’s fee for these things.”
O’Connell continued, “I said, ‘I did not know you were coming. You can’t come up here. You can’t come here unannounced.’ Notice no one had a key, so the relationship was not like that, but that was why: I didn’t like someone coming to my condominium without an invite or even a text or even a phone call… There was no warning. And I didn’t want someone coming in, because I didn’t want any confrontation.”
Ripa, then, proceeded to read a line from Rancic’s memoir on what O’Connell told her during their intercom breakup: “Nope. Sorry, home girl. Things change, but you take care, okay?”
After Ripa pressed him on whether he said that, O’Connell replied, “I don’t recall exact wording, so I can’t deny that I said that. It doesn’t sound like something I would say. I mean, if I were writing a memoir, it made for a good quote,” he added. “I’m going to applaud Giuliana for using colorful dialogue and everything.”
PEOPLE has reached out to Rancic for comment.
O’Connell recently celebrated 19 years of marriage to Rebecca Romijn on July 14. The two tied the knot in 2007 and share two kids, 17-year-old twins Charlie and Dolly. Rancic married Bill Rancic, the original winner of the Apprentice, in 2007. The Rancics have one child together, son Duke, 13.
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