Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said Thursday that days after actress Shailene Woodley accepted his marriage proposal, she told him she needed to have sex with another man before they got married.
Rodgers, 42, made the remarks on the “Not Just Football” podcast hosted by teammate Cam Heyward, offering his most explicit public account of how their engagement collapsed. He said Woodley, 34, accepted the proposal, then reversed course almost immediately.
“I date Shailene, I propose and she says yes,” Rodgers said. “She maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision. She could have said no. But not a couple of days after that, she tells me before we get married like, ‘I got to go f— this guy.’”
Aaron Rodgers claims his ex-fiancée Shailene Woodley requested permission to sleep with another man shortly after his proposal.
“Before we get married I have to go f*ck this guy.”
CREDIT: Not Just Football with Cam Heyward pic.twitter.com/d02tFepRQX
— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) September 10, 2026
Rodgers did not identify the man he said Woodley mentioned. A representative for Woodley did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new remarks.
“Her story is that I ruined her life and gave her crazy depression because I left her,” he said. “What are we talking about regarding me ruining your life? Shai, you left me. You took the ring off.”
Woodley has never publicly addressed the specific allegation that she asked to sleep with another man. She has, however, spoken in general terms about the relationship and its aftermath.
In a 2024 interview with Outside magazine, she said she had not shared much about the relationship “because it always makes me cry.” She described it as “not right” but also “beautiful,” and said she stayed in what she called a “toxic situation” because she was trying to be empathetic to someone else. She said a “really awful, traumatic” episode in early 2022 left her feeling as if she had lost “my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” and that she understood “depression and anxiety and, like, complete soul detachment.” She said she knew she was depressed when she “looked at a tree and felt nothing.”
In a January 2023 interview with Net-a-Porter, she called that period “the darkest, hardest time of [her] life” and said her personal life felt like “a big pain bubble for eight months.” She has also said the public nature of the relationship felt violating because it was her first high-profile romance.
