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While addressing Jerry O’Connell‘s recent comments about their past romance, Giuliana Rancic called out details she said weren’t true — and offered new insight into their “traumatizing” split.
Rancic, 51, used the Wednesday, July 29, episode of her iHeartRadio “Bill and Giuliana” podcast to set the record straight after feeling as if O’Connell, 52, was “downplaying what [their] relationship was” when he appeared on “Let’s Talk Off Camera” earlier this month.
“For a year and a half — except for the one breakup — we were together 24/7 every day, every night,” Rancic claimed. “You could listen to his interview and think maybe this was an easy relationship, he was dating a bunch of girls, but no. It was a real relationship.”
Rancic recalled how the couple would say “I love you” to each other “all day long.” She claimed everything was “perfect” and “totally fine” between them before the actor went to film a movie overseas with Spice Girls member Geri Halliwell.
Photos subsequently surfaced of the costars holding hands. Rancic referred to that moment as the “most shocking” of her life, adding, “I walked into a voiceover booth and fell to the ground, crying hysterically. It was awful. So upsetting and so devastating.”
After Rancic called O’Connell, she remembered he said, “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. I screwed up.”
She continued: “I was left to pick up the pieces of what was literally a perfect relationship for a year.”
According to Rancic, O’Connell made attempts to win her back after his romance with Halliwell, 53, fizzled out. He allegedly begged Rancic to take him back while calling his infidelity “the biggest mistake” of his life.
The pair reconciled, but it didn’t last long. Rancic recalled not being able to get ahold of O’Connell when he was in Las Vegas and that led to her visiting his home, where he infamously ended their relationship while speaking to her from his second-floor balcony.
Rancic called O’Connell “dismissive” and “cold as ice.”
“Until he told his story, I didn’t even for a second think there was someone in his apartment. I did not know that,” she added about the “devastating, heartbreaking, humiliating [and] traumatizing” breakup.
The journalist, who teased plans for a second part of her tell-all, noted that O’Connell had been invited to appear on the podcast. She clarified that her episode was “coming from a nice place, a place of love” and that she wanted to “unfuzz” her ex-boyfriend’s memory.
“Everything happens for a reason,” she concluded. “We are both happily married now, both have great families and we are both exactly where we’re meant to be.”
Earlier this month, Kelly Ripa read a passage from Rancic’s 2015 memoir, Going Off Script, in which she claimed O’Connell had told her through an intercom, “Nope, sorry, homegirl. Things change, but you take care, OK?”
O’Connell, for his part, couldn’t “deny that [he] said that” and admitted to being a “terrible boyfriend” to Rancic.
“[Another woman] was inside my condominium [when] Giuliana Rancic wanted entry into my condominium,” he told Ripa, 55. “Thank goodness, buzzer, gate, security. I paid a pretty hefty homeowners’ fee for these things. Cameras and everything.”
O’Connell went on to offer his side of the story.
“I said, ‘I did not know you were coming. You can’t come here unannounced,’” he continued. “Notice no one had a key, so the relationship was not like that. There was no warning, and I didn’t want someone coming in because I didn’t want any confrontation.”
While discussing his split from Rancic, O’Connell claimed their relationship “was [already] in trouble” by the time they parted ways. He also recalled public speculation that he was a “cheater.”
