“This Is Us” star Justin Hartley has at least one ex in his corner after the fallout of his divorce from “Selling Sunset” star Chrishell Stause.
The former couple’s split takes center stage on the third season of Netflix’s inexplicably compelling reality series about the lives and loves of a group of Los Angeles-based luxury-real-estate agents.
Hartley, for some reason, chose to file for divorce midway through the season, which means the camera caught all the messy details, including how a “blindsided” Stause found out about the news via a text message 45 minutes before it went public.
Stause has been riding a national wave of sympathy since the new season debuted last week. Her fans, meanwhile, have been filling up Hartley’s mentions with nasty comments about how the divorce went down.
While the “Smallville” alum has yet to publicly address the backlash, his ex-wife Lindsay Hartley is coming to his defense, insisting he’s the “exemplification of a solid man,” despite what anybody may think.
“In a day when social media should be used for positivity... an inspiration towards movement in an honest and deserving way... I’d like to join, by highlighting my appreciation for my family,” she shared on Instagram on Tuesday. “Today, I appreciate my ex-husband Justin for not only being [an] exemplification of a solid man but for being my dear friend and devoted father to our daughter. Simply put; for being family. We derive our own opinion of people by experiencing life and time together, and we do our best to hold dear the ones that maintain consistent kindness, love, and generosity.”
Justin and Lindsay Hartley, who co-starred on the NBC soap “Passions” together for years, were married from 2004 to 2012 and share a 16-year-old daughter, who reposted the statement on her own social media.
The actor filed for divorce from Stause in November 2019, citing irreconcilable differences. While he listed their separation date as July of that year, the two made a handful of public appearances together after that.
Hartley has since reportedly moved onto a new relationship with his former “Young and the Restless” co-star Sofia Pernas.
Reacting to the news on “Selling Sunset,” Stause said she was completely unaware of the severity of their issues at the time.
“Because of the crazy way in which this went down, people want answers, and I fucking want answers,” she said. “I know people are saying, like, we were only married two years — but it’s like, we were together for six years.”
She added, “I talked to him right after because I thought that must be a joke — but that was kind of the end of the communication. What am I supposed to say? What do you say after that?”
Later in the series, she suggested Hartley’s “This Is Us” fame took a toll on their marriage, explaining that “a lot has changed in the six years that we were together.”
“It’s not normal to meet somebody and then they become wildly famous or they become wildly rich or all these things,” Stause explained. “I don’t, at the end of the day, think that those things matter. I can understand, God forbid, your feelings obviously changed for me at some point, but I just feel like that’s how you would treat the garbage that you throw out.”