Will Arnett Got Real About Divorce And Having A Baby After 50

Arnett said he ‘pulled over to the side of the road and cried for an hour,’ during his split from Amy Poehler

Will Arnett plays the arrogant, delusional-but-lovable loser so damn well that sometime’s it hard to separate the actor from his egocentric on-screen personas.

“I like characters who are really cocky and really dumb. That always seems to be a really great cocktail for me,” Arnett said in an interview with Hadley Freeman for The Guardian. But in reality, as his hit adult animated series BoJack Horseman showed, Arnett has an amazing ability to get real, even about the heaviest of topics. The actor opened up about said heavy topics in his actual life, covering everything from his divorce from fellow comedic heavyweight Amy Poehler, to fathering a child with girlfriend Alessandra Brawn at the age of 50.

Arnett was shooting season four of Arrested Development when he and Poehler were in the midst of their separation back in 2013. He described the experience as “almost excruciating … Just brutal, brutal, brutal. I was driving to the set one day and I pulled over to the side of the road and cried for an hour.” The actor, who played Gob on the cult classic comedy series, says revisiting the character for the revival was “hilarious and cathartic.”

The actor also got a bit teary-eyed when talking about his friendship with Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz.

“From the moment I met Mitch, my life changed. I learned so much about the world from him, and I’m a better person because of my friendship with him. You’re not going to get me crying,” he said.

The actor also opened up about how different it is having a kid in your 50s than in your 30s

Arnett and Poehler share two sons, Archie, 13, and Abel, 11. In May 2020, Arnett and his girlfriend Brawn quietly welcomed a son into the world, Alexander Denison Arnett, aka “Denny.” According to Arnett, the experience of raising a child as an older parent wasn’t all that unexpected, but was still a lot to take on.

“Well, when you already have kids, you know how long the road is,” Arnett explained. “Like, this morning, just getting my two older boys out of the house and to school took a couple hours and by the time I’m home it’s 8:30 and I’m three hours into the day already and I’m like: ‘Oh my god. I’m in this for A WHILE.’”

When asked if he would consider having any more children, he smiled in an exasperated manner, eyes wide, saying, “No. I am absolutely not doing that.”

Despite the hardships, or the self-proclaimed “weird years” he experienced during his long separation from Poehler, Arnett seems to be in a good place.

“It is crazy to me how much my whole life has shifted in five years in such a dramatic way. Isn’t that wild?”