John Stamos on Calling His Ex the Devil—and Why He Thought Marvel Stardom Ended Their Marriage

John Stamos did the press-and-memoir thing in 2023 and decided to open the vault on his first marriage to Rebecca Romijn. It is not a warm and fuzzy trip down memory lane. She fired back, he doubled down, and the whole thing is a reminder that celebrity divorces can echo for decades.

How Stamos describes the breakup now

While promoting his memoir 'If You Would Have Told Me,' Stamos told People that the divorce wrecked him for far longer than he thinks is reasonable. Back then, he says he painted Romijn as the villain and lived inside that resentment for years. He even brought the list of things he hated about her into AA meetings until a sponsor pushed him to own his part. Eventually, he did.

'In my mind back then, she was the Devil... I couldn't believe how much I hated her, and it ruined my life.'

Stamos also talks about the narrative he felt from the outside: that Romijn's career was booming while his wasn't, and she left. He calls that perception humiliating and admits people might not have been wrong about the power imbalance at the time. For context, she was breaking big as Mystique in the X-Men trilogy when their marriage was wobbling.

The book goes even harsher

He writes that it was brutal to put those chapters together and admits he didn't know he was capable of that much anger toward another person. He also accuses Romijn of infidelity in the memoir. That's his claim, not independently verified here, but it's in the book.

Romijn's response

Romijn told Entertainment Tonight she was caught off guard by the way Stamos aired it out.

'I was very surprised by all of that, incredibly shocked actually. I was sort of blindsided by it.'

And then she basically tapped out, saying she didn't want to boost his book by engaging any further. Fairly clear boundary.

Where they landed after the dust-up

Despite the blowback, Stamos says he doesn't regret putting his truth out there. He told Us Weekly that release week was rough enough that he called his publicist in tears wondering what he'd done, but then he reframed it like this:

'Anything less than the truth is paralysis... it sets you free.'

He also claimed he could have written a lot more about other people but tried to focus the harshest lens on himself. Whether that squares with how it reads in the book is up to you.

Quick timeline

• 1994: They meet backstage at a Victoria's Secret fashion show.
• 1997: Engaged.
• 1998: Married.
• 2004: Separate.
• 2005: Divorce finalized.
• Now: Romijn is married to Jerry O'Connell; Stamos is married to Caitlin McHugh.

Messy? Yes. Surprising that old wounds still sting when you write a memoir and hit the interview circuit? Not really. But the behind-the-scenes personal stuff here is unusually raw, even by celebrity standards.