“I reached the depth of where I could go.”
Artist Anna Marie Tendler has opened up about the changes in her life following her split last year from comedian John Mulaney.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the 36-year-old spoke about how the past year was filled with plenty of professional highs and personal lows – the most public being her ex-husband welcoming a child with actress Olivia Munn months after their divorce.
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The couple announced their split in May 2021 in separate statements delivered through their publicists. “I am heartbroken that John has decided to end our marriage,” Tendler said in hers. “I wish him support and success as he continues his recovery.”
Mulaney reportedly first asked for a divorce in February of last year, shortly after checking into a rehab facility for alcohol and cocaine addiction in December 2020. He has been open about his struggle with addiction and sobriety in the past.
In the same month the couple’s split was announced, Mulaney and Munn’s relationship became public.
Mulaney confirmed Munn’s pregnancy in September on Late Night with Seth Meyers, stating, “Olivia and this baby have helped save me from myself.” The actress gave birth to their son, Malcolm Hiệp Mulaney, in November.
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When asked about the divorce, Tendler told Harper’s Bazaar about her shock, admitting she hit rock bottom.
“Everything that has transpired has been totally shocking and I think surreal,” she said.
“In a way, I feel like, well, it can only go up from here, because I reached the depth of where I could go.”
Despite buying a house in Connecticut with Mulaney in June 2020, Tendler has only ever lived in it alone, and she found the isolation difficult in the early half of 2021.
“I had a lot of bad days and medium days. I wouldn’t say I had any good days until the summer,” she said, adding that throwing herself into her art and finishing her masters degree helped her cope.
This, along with some humorous and self-deprecating TikToks, ultimately earned her several career wins and a fanbase outside of being the “oddball wife” character Mulaney had lovingly made her in his stand-up gigs.
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Back in 2015, the comedian made it clear that he and Tendler didn’t want kids, which saw the couple hailed as some sort of representatives of other happy, child-free-by-choice couples.
The dissolution of their marriage and Mulaney subsequently becoming a father thereby angered some fans, but Tendler said she finds it liberating that some major life questions she previously thought had been answered are no longer definitive.
She told Harper’s Bazaar that while she “always held partnership above having kids” she is now going to freeze her eggs.
“There were things I never even thought about before because that was just a closed door. So now that it feels like not as much of a closed door, it’s something that I ruminate on a lot,” she said.
“I feel lucky that I get to be standing on the precipice of all of these new things, that I get to possibly experience, and who knows how they will go? And there is certainly something exciting about that.”
