When Jerry O’Connell bumped into his ex Giuliana Rancic at the gym, he purposely bothered her.
“I used to see Julianna sometimes at Equinox, and this is a really funny thing to do. Everyone should do this with their exes. It’s really funny,” he said on Monday’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast with Kelly Ripa.
The host said that instead of trying to avoid an awkward exchange with his ex, he decided to “walk right in” and pretend to be flirting with her, going “nose to nose” with her.
The actor reenacted Rancic telling her how “weird” it was for him to meet her and say things like “I miss you” out loud.
“That would really annoy her,” he said proudly with a grin. “She’ll want to get rid of that guy.”
He admitted that the more it annoyed Rancic, the more he would become involved in it.
“She’s like, ‘Go away, stop it.'” And I think, “Oh, I miss you.” Have the same number? ”
The reporter and the “Stand by Me” star dated from 2003 to 2004.
In his memoir Going Off Script, Rancic famously accused O’Connell of brutally breaking up with him over the intercom.
In her 2015 revelation, Rancic claimed that her then-boyfriend told her: “No, I’m sorry, Homegirl. Things have changed, but be careful, okay?”
On Monday’s podcast, O’Connell admitted that “I don’t remember the exact wording” during their 2004 breakup.
“I can’t deny that I said that,” the “Jerry Maguire” actor confessed. “It doesn’t seem like something I would say, but then again, if I were writing a memoir, that would be a good quote.”
She also said that she had been a “terrible boyfriend” to the journalist throughout their relationship.
“[Another woman]was inside my condo. … Giuliana Rancic was trying to get into my condo. Thankfully, the buzzer, the gate, the security. I paid a pretty high home ownership fee for these things. Cameras and everything.”
“I said, ‘I didn’t know you were coming. You can’t come here without notice,'” he recalled. “Keep in mind that no one had the keys. So the relationship was never like that. There was no warning. We didn’t want anyone to come in because we didn’t want a confrontation.”
