Yesterday David Arquette went on Oprah to give his first major interview post rehab. We heard some advance details in which he spoke about his addiction, saying he had his first drink at four, stole pot from his dad at eight and was “seriously drinking” by the age of 12. He also revealed that he went to rehab as the result of an intervention by his estranged wife, Courteney Cox, and his sister, Medium star Patricia Arquette.
Now that the interview has aired we know that David also spoke about his relationship with Courtney and their separation. It was like a very long therapy session with a guy who is a seasoned therapy participant and knew exactly what to say. That’s not to say that David was anything but very sincere, funny, and endearing. He seems committed to his recovering and to healing both himself and his family. I was very impressed with him and what he told Oprah.
We’ve already covered a guest appearance by David’s sisters, in which they discussed how difficult and abusive their childhood was and how that affected their little brother.
Here are some of the highlights of David’s interview. (I’m putting this in a quote box but the commentary is mine):
Says he’s “just a baby” at recovering. “A lot of it is about getting out of my head, being true to myself and figuring out where my path is. I have a critic in my mind that’s very mean and vicious. Sometimes it leads me down the wrong path. Being able to… identify that voice in my head… helps me to go the right direction.” Jokes that “if you’re gonna go through a breakdown. Have the breakdown on Howard Stern. Come back together on Oprah.”
Of Courtney “she’s been incredibly supportive, and she’s my best friend and I love her a lot.”
“The best thing for me in sobriety is being authentic. Starting to see things as they are, and being able to distance myself and go deeper within who I am… becoming connected to a bigger movement that you started, Oprah.” That was funny! On when he started to see trouble in the marriage
“We had our 11th year anniversary (last year in June), and Courtney said ‘I don’t want to be your mother anymore.” She gave him a motorcycle as a present and told him she was unhappy. He said he felt “abandoned at the point like she’d broken the deal.”On Courteney potentially cheating
“There were tabloid stories coming out about her and about someone on her show having an affair… which is not true at all. She could relate to members on her cast and she could talk to them in a way she couldn’t talk to me…”David said he didn’t feel at the time like he had abandoned Courtney because he “wasn’t connected” to his role in her unhappiness and was “making myself the victim. I didn’t deal with it in a mature or honorable way at all.”
He said that he was angry at everyone, but that he learned in rehab from a yoga instructor that “Anger is like drinking poison and expecting someone to die.”
As for the change in him, he said that Howard Stern was a catalyst and that “I could have gone on this way for another 30 years and just lost everything and completely destroyed my life…”
David and Courteney went to couples therapy together for a year before they got married, and he said that “Courteney grounds me, and I’m the live wire…. it’s only in myself that I [can] find grounding.”
On whether he’s getting back with Courtney
“There’s always the possibility. That would be the ideal situation.”On Courtney’s maybe-affair
“When she said that to me [about getting a separation] there were these rumors and tabloids coming out… I thought she was having an affair with someone. No one would have said something like that if she weren’t. That’s what I thought. That made me angry… my way of doing that was getting really self destructive and virtually suicidal in a way.”David went on to speak about his fling with a waitress, which happened when he had an agreement with Courtney to see other people and thought [Courtney] was sleeping with another guy, to be honest with you.” Then his publicist called him and told him the tabloids had picked up on the affair, so they decided to make the statement that they’d been separated.
So here’s what I think, Courtney wanted to hook up with her co-star, so she called for a time out in her marriage. She might not have been cheating at that time, but she was having an emotional affair and wanted a pass to sleep with the other guy. David flipped out and started drinking and partying but within a few months he realized that wasn’t helping anything. He went to rehab and took it seriously and now he’s working on repairing himself and his marriage. Courtney is still with that Brian Von Holt guy probably, (according to this weeks Enquirer she’s is at least) and that’s complicating things.
David told Oprah that he’s living alone in a home that he and Courtney own in LA, and he said that he’s going to support groups, doing yoga and meditating and working on some side projects like pitching a game show. (You can watch a segment with him at home on Oprah.com) He’s a guy who feels things deeply and needs to find a constructive way to cope with it. I was really touched by him and by his story.
I just can’t say anything bad about him. He is trying hard to over come some serious demons. And it is not a quick fix.
And I don’t see Courteney ever going back to him. She has done checked out from that marriage emotionally. Maybe in a few years things might turn around. But it is not happening now.
But I do hope David finds some kind of peace within his own head. And gets a new hobby to keep him occupied.
I don’t think Courtney plans on divorcing him anytime soon but I doubt they’ll get back together. I think she definitely slept with Brian Van Holt and the ‘found out it wasn’t true’ part is bullshit.
Although he hasn’t done the kind of work that would make me particularly interested in him, I have to said that his openness and honesty make him extremely endearing.I hope he gets healthy, and I hope Courtney enjoys her break, then remembers that the grass is not always greener, passion fades, and having a partner who is your best friend, a good human and a great Dad is worth alot.
I have mixed feelings about David. He seems like a genuinely troubled man, however I also feel like his therapist should advise him to let go of Courtney if she has essentially moved on with Brian. I get that she wants to be there for him, but it seems like she is leading him on like a puppy. IMO David won’t benefit from that, he seems very fragile. I hope Patricia and Roseanna are there for him during this time.
That’s exactly what I think happened, too – Courtney wanted to sleep with someone else. I feel sorry for David, but wish they wouldn’t do this publicly.
It’s an incredibly tangled web. He and Court have been together for so long…can you imagine the other side of the struggle, too? Always being the responsible party, always trying to talk the other one down? It had to be exhausting. She went about it the right way. Life just isn’t ideal.
That being said, David is a troubled man, and an endearing one. He’s taking his problems by the horns and doing his best. God bless the guy.
I walked away from the Oprah show with a different take than most of you guys. I thought he was totally self-absorbed to the point of being boring. If he wasn’t a celebrity this whole story wouldn’t even be a blip on anybody’s radar (except his own).
Ahh…I’ll take him if you don’t want him Courtney.
I like David. I think he is a decent man who stuffs up but doesn’t mean to. He says the first things that come to him without thinking. I’m courting fire here, but what the hay I’ll never let anyone stop me from having my say here and I’m standing my ground and my right to be here – I feel that he and Courteney might stand a good chance at re-uniting now that Aniston is in NYC and is not hovering around them all the time. David hinted that was part of the problem. They can finally have space to be a couple and take vacations and go out to restaurants as a couple. Couples do need that alone time.
I continue to be shocked by how few people see Courteney’s side of this at all. I get that he’s endearingly honest and open–but at the same time, these things are also the hallmark of an unstable child. He blurts his private business all over the world, like a kid who can’t tell what subjects are appropriate conversation at the dinner table. Watch him. He’s manic all the time. And he just said he’s been drinking since he was a kid.
I cannot imagine being married to that. They’ve been together for eleven years, so there’s clearly real feeling there, beyond the usual Hollywood hookup. Estranged or not, she was there for him at an intervention, tryinig to help him. She doesn’t bash him in the press. If she is dating VanHolt, she doesn’t flaunt it in public–unlike, say, Arquette’s affair, or any number of others. She hasn’t pulled “yank the kid,” either.
Even if she did start talking to someone in her work life, which led to more as her home relationship crumbled (under the pressure of trying to manage his childish ways, their mutual parenting pressures, and his already-existing drinking problem), it doesn’t mean she was a bad wife to him. Not liking her Botox use and having bad feelings about attractive women and infidelity I get. But bashing her as a spouse? It’s both too credulous of the tabloids and too simplistic a judgment by far. YMMV, naturally.
RisiaSkye, I guess I just really don’t like Courteney much or am impressed by her attitude to her marriage, and I feel for David. Courteney is often brow-beating and berrating David in public. She has told the public he is childish amongst other things. I just feel that he is bullied and hen-pecked, that she thinks she is the boss of him, and I feel that she doesn’t appreciate him. She rules the roost, dragging her friend with her when they go out, you just know the poor guy has no say in if they are by themselves as a couple or if Courteney’s little friend Jen comes along. I feel for David because I feel she orders him about, gets her own way in everything, (you can just tell) and does not appreciate him. I don’t think he deserves the way she treats him, tbh.
Best of luck to him. If it doesn’t work out with CC, he’ll find someone who appreciates him.
I can’t say anything bad about him but I also can’t blame Courtney. David is the kind of guy that is hard not to love. He is sweet, sensitive, funny, caring, and tremendously loving and kind. But he does seem very needy and extremely vulnerable. I bet he is Courtney’s best friend. He is great best friend material. But I could see how being married to somebody like that would be draining and difficult. Best friends you can tell to go home or that you need some space or that you are going out with your other best friend and will get up later. In marriage, there are no breaks. It is fulltime,especially when there are young children involved.
As we say in the south “Bless his heart”
I wish him all the best.
Courtney is having an affair, and is just staying low and one day will come out with it, that they were friends and it turned into something more long after the separation, blah, blah. Not that I blame her. Being married to him must have been beyond difficult, but sometimes honesty and moving on is better than the long lie and easing yourself out of the marriage, because the other person just can’t understand it. It’s ultimately cruel, not kind, to drag it out and be less than honest because it gives him false hope.
i do think he seems like a good guy. But why is he doing this so publicly, it should be between courtney and him..
I also don’t think Cox has done anything bad so I don’t like the victim act.
He just breaks my heart.
jusa nother addict with the same old story – you can find tons of them in AA. However, be nice to see charlie seen back inthe rooms
Sounds like they all had it bad but he is just using it to get sympathy. Not long ago he was on Howard accusing his daughter’s mother of cheating (wrong whether it was true or not). It was all her fault, now it’s his parents. Maybe in a year an interview about how he has changed may be believable. I think Courtney is handling her child’s father very gently and like a good friend. Of course he loves her, too bad he didn’t grow up sooner.
I really do like this guy, I hope he is able to get his life where he wants it to be, Best wishes David
@RisiaSkye: So much word to your post!
It seems people on here ready to point the blame and accuse Courteney of an affair (though no actual proof of one exists – absolutely no pics of her and any guy together off set, no credible reports that she’s with van Holt, etc.) missed what David himself said about how things unfolded. He stated that he had been drinking more, partying, etc., BEFORE Courteney told him she was tired of being his mother – in fact it’s what led her to that point, as he said she was constantly having to say to him, “you’re drinking too much,” “you’re smoking too many cigars,” etc.
She was honest with him that this side of David wasn’t attractive to her, and how does he decide to handle it? As he said, he selfishly and childishly decided to party and booze harder, which is what eventually led to him ending up in rehab, but also served to solidify exactly what Courteney was concerned about and exactly what she didn’t want.
I’ve always liked them as a couple, and they were genuinely sweet together. For the poster claiming she always belittled him – not true. She has certainly played up his quirkiness for comedy in past interviews, but she has also always maintained what a sweet and doting and fun husband and father he is/was. It’s not her fault she is more mature/older than him and professionally more successful: that was their dynamic. I have sympathy for him that his childhood was the way it was as well. However, you cannot hide behind that forever and you have to move through it in order to mature. I hope they can work it out and make the decision regarding their relationship that is the best for them both.
i completely heart David — he is the male equivalent of me — messed up inside but with a heart in the right place. David, hang in there and wishing you well !! xoxo
I loved his interview on Oprah. He was very sincere. I wish him all the best.
People with emotional and physical childhood traumas get stagnated on the age that caused the most trauma. Meaning you might become an adult physically but emotionally you stay a child. You love like a child and process life through the eyes of a child. I feel for him.
I feel badly for him. He seems sincere. I do wish him the best and hope he cleans up better than Charlie Sheen. But Courteney must be exhausted with this shit after a dozen years. Sad, but can’t say I blame her for getting tired of the whole situation.
Oh I really really REALLY want them to get back together. I hope everything works out. Best of luck to them both.
@Anon I saw the complete interview. He said he believed she was having an affair and then he ‘found out’ she wasn’t.
I find that interesting because he made denials to People and Howard Stern during the time he told Oprah he did believe there was an affair. In other words he was lying then and it’s very possible he is still lying to protect Cox. Which is possibly why Oprah didn’t follow up on the questioning.
I think in the scenario you described of Arquette drinking and being self destructive it’s easy to see Cox getting at the least emotionally involved with a co-worker. I also think it possible she didn’t cheat until after they were separated but there was an affair of the heart. I think she ‘checked out’ of that marraige and Arqette reacted by becoming more and more self abusive.
Even Oprah said to David that Courteney had put up with a lot, which I thought was telling. How old is this guy again? 40 or so? Like the time to be blaming other people is gone my friend-man up and take some personal responsibility. Sure, his childhood was messed up but a lot of people have dysfunctional childhoods but still don’t become alcoholics and drug addicts.
I liked that Alexandra, thank-you.
@mln76: Yes he did say he believed she might be having an affair and then realized she wasn’t – but he also said he believed this because in his mind, no one would ask for a separation otherwise – that he didn’t see her reasons for wanting a break at the time. His point was that he didn’t see her perspective because he didn’t realize how out of control he was getting and how impactful his behavior was on those around him.
Maybe she was having an affair – but there is absolutely no proof of that all these months later, even when things are so public and should be very easy for the paps to snap a compromising pic of her. I get that some on here want to believe that it comes down to an affair, but relationships can be much more complicated than that – and in the case of his childhood and previous and current substance abuse issues, his wife’s success, etc., there is plenty there that could cause a split without even needing a third party to enter into the mix.
I think he’s being as honest as he always has been – if there was something with Cox and the co-worker he would have said. They are obviously still very close and she obviously still cares a great deal about him – enough to help stage an intervention after all of his antics last fall. They have both had nothing but the best things to say about each other, and unless something real comes to light, there’s no reason to believe anything else is at play here.
These two have been swingers for years. I’m suprised Court put up with him for as long as she did – I would have kicked him to the kerb years ago. Hang on, I wouldn’t have hooked up with him let alone married and had a child together. Self absorbed and boring. Can’t take responsibility for his own actions. If I was Court I’d be looking for a much more stable man too.