Chelsea Winstanley has a lot to say about why her marriage to Taika Waititi fell apart.
Winstanley, 48, got “brutally honest” about her split from Waititi, also 48, during a recent episode of the “It’s Personal With Anika Moa” podcast, reflecting on the “resentment” she felt while raising their two daughters as Waititi was working on Thor: Ragnarok.
“I didn’t want to be the dutiful wife and race over to the Gold Coast where he was making Thor and sit in an apartment all day long f—king day, twiddling my thumbs,” Winstanley, a film producer, confessed.
She pointed out, “You don’t make a human being on your own, therefore you shouldn’t have to raise a human being on your own either.”
Winstanley noted that moving with Waititi would have required taking the kids out of “kōhanga reo,” a Maori school program. “And that to me was really important. So I said, ‘I’m not going to do that, but we’ll come over and visit,’” she said. “That probably was the beginning of the unraveling because I wasn’t that pandering, dutiful, get on my knees and whatever you want [kind of woman].”
She quipped, “Somebody else was though,” seemingly hinting at infidelity on Waititi’s part and adding that she “didn’t know” until years later. (Us Weekly has reached out for comment.)
The exes were married from 2011 to 2018 and share Te Hinekahu, 11, and Matewa Kiritapu, 8. Winstanley acknowledged her own “stubbornness” and potential role in the breakup.
“I wanna be really honest and own my participation in that [resentment] and maybe the unraveling of our relationship,” she said.
She further reflected on the “humiliation” of a public separation, claiming she “was married to someone who really, was just on their own buzz” with “tunnel vision for whatever reasons.”
“I don’t need anyone else for me to be able to be happy, in control, or do what I want to do in the spaces that I love doing,” Winstanley continued. “It’s nice to have someone who can support you … or just to go, ‘You got this’ or ‘I’m so proud of you.’ But there was never any of that. There was no interest in what I wanted to be doing. So that said volumes.”
Taika subsequently married singer Rita Ora in 2022 after one year of dating, secretly tying the knot in London. The wedding news came months after Ora popped the question.
“Yeah, it was beautiful,” Waititi revealed to Vogue in August 2023. “Just having close friends and not having it too big. We didn’t have table settings or any of the stressful things that go along with weddings, and it was nice to just have it super-simple.”
Winstanley, on the other hand, revealed in her podcast interview that she is still healing.
“We’re all on our own journey as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “To help get me through on a daily basis, I remind myself that I’m not responsible for what anybody does. I’m just responsible for the way in which I react to that. … You can change that narrative at any point, as well.”
