Halle Berry was married to David Justice from 1993 to 1997. And now, nearly three decades later, the former MLB player has given his take on their split — and it hasn’t gone down well.
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Appearing on Matt Barnes’s All the Smoke podcast last week, David looked back on the early days of his and Halle’s relationship and confessed he didn’t “know if [his] heart was really into it.”
“She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months,” he said, recalling that they met in May 1992. “I said OK, because I couldn’t say no. Who’s going to say no at that time? … I didn’t want to make her feel bad and say no, you know, or [if] I was just in the moment.”
David — who had only been in one relationship prior to his marriage to Halle — recalled that he had certain expectations for what his wife should be like. “My knowledge and my understanding, my wisdom around relationships just wasn’t vast,” he confessed. “I’m a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I’m thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, you know?”
After they tied the knot, David said he began having concerns about whether Halle was someone he wanted to have children with. “I’m thinking, ‘OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?’” he questioned. “At that time, as a young guy — she don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem like, motherly, and then we start having issues.”
Off the back of her breakthrough roles in Jungle Fever (1991) and Boomerang (1992), Halle was busy with her acting career in the mid-’90s. David said they “spent a lot of time apart,” but probably could’ve made the relationship work if they “knew about therapy.” Despite this, he said he “decided to leave her.”
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“February 1996, I told her, ‘I can’t do this no more,’” he said.
In case you weren’t aware, Halle and David’s split wound up getting pretty messy. In the fall of 1996, Halle filed a restraining order against her ex, claiming that she felt “fear for [her] personal safety and well-being” following an alleged verbal altercation outside her home. David has denied this, saying Halle was “throwing a tantrum.”
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Halle has previously opened up about being badly physically abused by one of her famous exes. She has never named the individual, but on more than one occasion, David has denied speculation that it was him.
Now, as he continues to talk about their marriage, David’s comments about Halle not cooking, cleaning, or being “motherly” have sparked a lot of backlash online. Among the comments, many are expressing disbelief that you’d marry a famous actor and expect her to be taking on the brunt of household responsibilities. (According to Halle’s IMDb page, she worked on over 10 projects from 1992 to 1997.)
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“Lol, he really thought she was gonna stop her acting career and become a housewife,” wrote one user in response to the clip on X, while someone else suggested “he wanted her to dim her light for him.”
“Halle Berry, a household name, was supposed to take time away from her breadwinning career to ‘cook and clean’ for a man I’ve never heard of?! LMAOOOO!” read another post with over 140,000 likes. “According to their net worths, he needed to be the one throwing the apron on and cleaning the house too.”
“If she’s a famous actor and he’s a professional baseball player why do you need her to cook and clean if you can afford a chef with maids ????” questioned another user.
“She’s Halle fuckin Berry bro.. you think God sent here down here to swiffer shit?? Lol,” someone else remarked.
Plenty of others also criticized his sentiment in general, saying: “So many Straight men don’t want political, emotional and spiritual life partners, they just want domestic servants. Hire a house keeper.”
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“So, he thought that he had caught a beautiful rare bird to clip its wings and keep it caged? How emotionally unsound,” added someone else, referring to a popular quote from Trevor Noah about men who are attracted to “independent women” but actually want to make them “subservient.”
Today, Halle is in a happy relationship with singer-songwriter Van Hunt, and she shares two children, daughter Nahla and son Maceo-Robert, with former partners. Meanwhile, David has been married to Rebecca Villalobos since 2001.
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Related: 19 Celeb Comments So Unbelievably Awful You Won’t Know Whether To Cringe Or Scream
All in all, the reactions to David’s comments have not been good. But what’s your take? LMK in the comments. You can find the full podcast interview here.
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