Nick Lachey has no plans to read his famous ex Jessica Simpson’s best-selling memoir, Open Book. Why? “I lived the book, you know what I mean? I know what the truth is, so I don’t need to read it or read someone’s version of it in a story that I know. I lived it. No, I never read it,” the 98 Degrees singer and Alter Ego judge told SiriusXM’s Radio Andy host Andy Cohen on Monday (Nov. 1).
Lachey, 47, told Cohen that he was aware the book was dropping in Feb. 2020, but felt no need to seek it out to see how he was portrayed; Lachey and Simpson got married in 2002, then split in 2005 and divorced in 2006 following a wild ride on the MTV reality show Newlyweds, which ran from August 2003 until March 2005.
Asked if anyone gave him a head’s up about, say, the five topics Simpson covered that might be of interest to him, Lachey said no again, doubling down on the nope when Cohen pushed for a response to the news that Amazon is adapting the book as a fictionalized drama. When Lachey was too slow to suggest an actor who could portray him — with show producer John Hil suggesting disgraced Call Me By Your Name star Armie Hammer — Nick had some fun with it.
“Is Armie Hammer working? I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” the Cincinnati-bred singer said about the actor who checked into a treatment facility earlier this year after being accused by several women of sexual assault. “I’m thrilled to be where I am in life and that was 20 years ago, so it’s honestly the last thing on my mind these days.” Lachey has been married to Vanessa Lachey since 2011 and they have three kids, while Simpson married Eric Johnson in 2014 and they have three children as well.
In the meantime, Simpson celebrated four years of sobriety by posting a throwback photo from 2017 in which she described herself as “unrecognizable,” writing, “Personally, to do this I needed to stop drinking alcohol because it kept my mind and heart circling in the same direction and quite honestly I was exhausted. I wanted to feel the pain so I could carry it like a badge of honor.”
In the snap, the singer sits glumly on a couch in a pink sweatsuit with sunshine lighting half her face. “This person in the early morning of Nov 1, 2017 is an unrecognizable version of myself,” she wrote. “I had so much self discovery to unlock and explore.”
Watch the interview with Cohen and see Simpson’s throwback pic below.
