Josh Duhamel is giving a little love to ex-wife Fergie thanking her in his new comedy Buddy Games for all she did to inspire him to write, direct and star in the film. The actor opened up about his ex’s influence on his latest passion project on Friday’s TODAY Show, explaining, “This movie goes back about four years, I think, is when I first started writing it. And she was the one who said, ‘You know what? You can direct this. You can do this.’”
Looking back on that push to get him going, Duhamel knew he had to give a little shoutout to the singer. “When we were doing the final credits, I go, ‘You know what? I gotta give Ferg a little shoutout,’ because she was somebody who told me to go do it,” he continued. “Because honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could.”
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The Safe Haven actor and Black Eyed Peas star split in September 2017, bringing to an end eight years of marriage. However, Fergie didn’t file for divorce until May 2019, and the couple’s divorce was only finalized in November of that year. “With absolute love and respect, we decided to separate as a couple earlier this year,” Fergie and Duhamel said in a joint statement at the time. “To give our family the best opportunity to adjust, we wanted to keep this a private matter before sharing it with the public. We are and will always be united in our support of each other and our family.”
The former couple shares 7-year-old son Axl and have dedicated themselves to co-parenting even after ending their marriage. “I love Josh; he’s the father of my child … You’re making me cry,” Fergie told Wendy Williams in 2017 when asked about the split. “We forever have that project together and we’re doing the best we can.”
Not long after, Fergie said she and Duhamel were “great friends” in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “We’re great friends, Josh and I, there’s so much love that we have for each other,” she explained at the time. “We really like each other; we have fun with each other. We’re just not a romantic couple anymore.”
“But we are still Axl’s parents through and through, and our families — each other’s families, the cousins, my nieces and nephews — it’s all the same,” she added. “So that’s the only thing that’s changed. It’s just been all love in our family. Our families are families together and that cannot change. That is Axl’s family, the cousins, I mean, all of mine, the Duhamel’s and the Kempers and everybody that I’ve fallen in love with, they’re a family.”
