Jessica Simpson made a major hair change to gain back confidence after her split from ex-husband Nick Lachey.
“I chopped it all off,” Simpson, 43, shared during a Tuesday, December 5, interview with Footwear News. “I was going through a divorce. I just wanted to wear something that was very me.”
The singer, who was taking a look back at some of her most iconic Y2K, revisited her short blonde bob and a purple dress from 2006, which she wore while promoting her album A Public Affair. She paired the ensemble with boots from her own shoewear brand.
“And then I wore a Jessica Simpson Collection boot,” she explained. “I just thought it was fun that you could fold them over, you know? Maybe that will come back one day, but it’s a little Renaissance or something.”
Simpson began dating Lachey in 1999 when she was 18 years old. After an off-and-on romance, they tied the knot in October 2002. Their marriage was then chronicled on MTV’s Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, which ran for three seasons from August 2003 to March 2005. Nine months after the series finale, Simpson filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split.
In her February 2020 memoir, Open Book, Simpson detailed her life with Lachey and how it felt for her relationship in exist in the public eye. “The thing about falling in love with someone in a boyband is that you’re not alone,” she wrote about her early days of dating 98 Degrees singer. “There are a lot of girls out there who had already complied all the details on Nick Lachey.”
“I didn’t mind if I looked dumb, but I wanted people to see the fairy tale in Nick. In us,” Simpson explained. “I had the Instagram-girlfriend syndrome before it was a thing, and I wanted the world to see my husband in the best light because I was hopelessly in love with him.”
Simpson noted that after a while, filming Newlyweds became akin to playing a character. “We had become actors in our own lives, playing ourselves,” she continued. “Worse, we slowly started acting out our parts even when cameras weren’t rolling.”
By the time production picked up for season 3, Simpson said she was “sick of lying” about her marriage, adding that Lachey told the crew to “stop rolling” so often that the show’s final episode was nothing more than a montage of clips. “It was bizarre, and I never watched it,” she said. “We finished our run and fulfilled the contract.”