Jessica Simpson says she had an ’emotional affair’ with her Dukes of Hazzard co-star Johnny Knoxville.
The singer claims she and the Jackass star developed an ‘intense bond’ while filming the 2005 movie and it left her feeling like she had ‘betrayed’ her then-husband Nick Lachey.
Opening up in her new memoir, Open Book, Jessica explains that while nothing ever got physical between her and Johnny, she feels like she was unfaithful emotionally and that, to her, was worse than actually cheating.
People shared an excerpt from her book, where Jessica writes: ‘I could share my deepest authentic thoughts with him and he didn’t roll his eyes at me.
‘He actually liked that I was smart and embraced my vulnerabilities, he believed in me and made me feel I could do anything… now I was afraid I couldn’t trust myself.’
She ruled out things getting physical because both she and Johnny were married at the time, but says: ‘I had placed such an emphasis on sex by not having it before marriage. After I actually had sex, I understood the emotional part was what mattered.
‘Johnny and I had that, which seemed far more of a betrayal to my marriage than sex.’
Jessica married Nick in 2002, after meeting at a party four years previously, and they were husband and wife for three years before splitting in 2005.
Johnny, meanwhile, was married to ex-wife Melanie Lynn Clapp, who he split from in 2008. He remarried in 2010 and wed Naomi Nelson.
In her new tell-all, Jessica also discusses her messy divorce from Nick and says she doesn’t understand how he could have been ‘blindsided’ by their split, as he claimed to the press because they hadn’t been speaking at the time.
While her book speaks a lot about her marriage to Nick, Jessica has said she ‘still has a lot of love’ for the 98 degrees singer and insists she has tried to rehash their relationship respectfully.
‘I tried to handle everything [in the book] with as much care as possible. He has a family, he’s married… it’s really the marriage through my lens,’ she told Glamour.
‘I still have a lot of love for Nick because he taught me how to be.’
Nick recently revealed that he ‘hasn’t read a single word’ of Jessica’s book, but insists the pair have a ‘mutual respect’ and he’s now moved on.
Metro.co.uk has reached out to reps for Jessica, Johnny, and Nick.
