Halle Berry's marriage to former Major League Baseball player David Justice may have ended nearly 30 years ago, but she still seems to be on Justice's mind.
And fans are not liking anything he has to say about it.
Justice recently appeared on the All The Smoke podcast, and among the topics Justice got into was his marriage to Berry from 1993 to 1997, and specifically why it ended.
The reason for the split? Berry wasn't "motherly" enough.
The conversation started off with Justice basically saying he married Berry out of pity.
"She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months. 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."
As the marriage progressed, it seems that Berry's life as a working woman in Hollywood was at odds with what Justice expected of a woman at that time in his life: Basically the kind of regressive sexist nonsense that is sadly once again all the rage these days.
He explained:
“I'm a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I'm thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, you know?”
“...I’m thinking, ‘OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?’”
"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.”
In fairness, we're all very different people in our 20s and 30s, and Justice conceded that if they had "known about therapy" at the time, the relationship may have been salvageable.
Regardless, the divorce that ensued was far from peaceful. It escalated in 1996 to an altercation outside Berry's home that resulted in her obtaining a restraining order against him. Justice denied any wrongdoing and said Berry was "throwing a tantrum."
Berry has also spoken about having been in an abusive relationship in her past, though she has declined to specify with whom. Justice has denied any abuse.
In any case, Justice's take on his marriage to Berry has not gone over well with people online.
After divorcing Justice, Berry went on to become the first—and to this day only—Black woman to win a Best Actress Oscar in 2002 for her work in Monster's Ball, and became the first Black woman to earn $20 million for a single film with 2020's Bruised, which she also directed.
And somehow amidst all that, she figured out how to be "motherly" to her two children, Nahla Ariela Aubry and Maceo-Robert Martinez. No word on whether she has time to cook and clean for current boyfriend Van Hunt, however.
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