Entertainment
Jennie Garth Says Ex Peter Facinelli ‘Unblocked’ Her on Instagram, They’re Now ‘Friends’
“This is the power of the pod people,” said the actress, who hosted her ex-husband on a two-part episode of her ‘I Choose Me’ podcast last month.
Jennie Garth is opening up about how her podcast has positively affected her relationship with ex-husband Peter Facinelli.
During Sunday’s mini-episode of her I Choose Me podcast, the actress revealed that the exes are now “officially friends” after they discussed their divorce on her podcast last month.
“I want to share with you guys something really quickly. The good that has come from this pod … but specifically the episode with my ex Peter,” Garth, 52, began. “Guys, we are officially friends now.”
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The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum said her ex “even unblocked” her on Instagram.
“I’ve been blocked on his socials for so long that I stopped caring years ago,” Garth said. “But I’m unblocked now, you guys. That’s big news.”
“And not just that! He let me borrow his cooler for a shoot that I had this past weekend,” she continued. “He let me use his guest room for some fittings that we had to do with some people.”
Garth went on to share that she and Facinelli are even planning things together.
“Get this: he invited me to his son Jack’s christening,” she said of her ex’s son, whom he shares with fiancée Lily Anne Harrison. “And this week — get ready for it — we are all gonna be going on a boat together with the whole family.”
“Whether we push one another overboard, that is still TBD,” she joked, adding, “But this is the power of the pod people. P-O-T-P — power of the pod.”
Garth and Facinelli, 50, were married for over 10 years. The former couple — who share daughters Luca, 26, Lola, 21, and Fiona, 17 — met in 1995, and tied the knot in 2001 after welcoming their first child. Facinelli filed for divorce in 2012, and their divorce was finalized in 2013.
Garth invited her ex-husband on for a two-part episode of her I Choose Me podcast last month, during which the pair reflected on their marriage, eventual divorce, and their lives after, including co-parenting together, and their new relationships.
At one point, Facinelli recalled what led to his decision to file for divorce from Garth.
“I was very conflicted. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means,” he said.
The Twilight star also added that if they didn’t have kids, he doesn’t think he would have stayed with Garth as long — “because I would have had the freedom to go, ‘OK, I need to be able to figure out who I am.'”
While Facinelli said he “felt gutted to break our family apart,” ultimately he believes it was the “right decision.”
He and Garth both shared that their split wound up strengthening their family.
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“On one hand, they missed out on that idyllic family, my parents are still married kind of thing,” Garth explained. “But on the other hand, they gained so much more emotional depth, and so much more strength, and so many other things from experiencing the way it happened with us.”
It also allowed Facinelli to get “in touch with” his own identity, which he felt he “hadn’t developed” because of how young he was when the pair got together, comparing the union to an “arranged marriage.”
“I felt a lot of it was I was in this marriage and it felt to me a little bit like an arranged marriage,” he said. “Like, I loved you, and we had this beautiful family from the outside, but I hadn’t developed who I was. I don’t even know how you could love me because I didn’t know me.”
He added, “I didn’t know who I was and so I needed to figure that out. I didn’t feel like I had the space to do that within the marriage.”
In the years following their divorce, Garth moved on with Dave Abrams, whom she married in 2015. They briefly separated and filed for divorce, before later reconciling. Facinelli, meanwhile, became engaged to Harrison in 2020, and they welcomed their son Jack in September 2022.