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Melissa Etheridge hasn’t spoken to Brad Pitt in close to 20 years, but she continues to field questions about him — perhaps because she always gives juicy answers.
The “Come to My Window” singer appeared on Monday’s Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen and was asked a viewer question about Pitt’s reunion with ex-wife Jennifer Aniston, whom he has remained friendly with, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards earlier this year. While Etheridge said she was hoping to do the show without discussing “her whose name will not be mentioned” — a reference to Pitt’s second wife, Angelina Jolie, whom she bashed during a 2016 interview with Cohen — she chatted on the topic anyway.
Etheridge, who was a longtime Pitt friend and performed at his and Aniston’s 2000 wedding (an acoustic version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” — with Dermot Mulroney on mandolin) — replied, "You know what? I loved Brad and Jen together. They were beautiful. I believe they will always remain friends because they're two very special people that can get through anything. I just hope that their friendship lasts."
Speaking about the era in which Pitt and Aniston were Hollywood’s golden couple — with the matching highlights to prove it — Etheridge said, “Those were the glory days. I remember those days.”
Pitt and Aniston separated in January 2005. Rumors quickly swirled that he had something going on with Mr. & Mrs. Smith co-star Jolie — and by spring they were a confirmed couple. Before the ink was dry on his divorce, Pitt had initiated the process of adopting Jolie’s two children — and Jolie was pregnant with the couple’s first biological child, Shiloh.
Etheridge, who was once so close to Pitt that she considered him for the role of sperm donor (musician David Crosby did the job), has never been shy about the fact that when Pitt got together with Jolie, she never spoke to him again. (In 2018, she said she actually hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years, making it close to 20 years now. And in 2013, she said she had made multiple attempts to reach out to him.)
Through the years she’s ripped Jolie — including with Cohen during a chat on his Sirius radio show in 2016. That was after Jolie very publicly split with Pitt and they were locked in a custody battle over their six children — with unfounded accusations about Pitt being abusive toward them surfacing in the media.
“It breaks my heart that anyone would take something as personal as your marriage and your relationship and your rights to your children and do it as purposefully as I see it’s being done,” Etheridge said of Jolie. She called it “completely unfounded” and said “It’s really heartbreaking to see.” During that interview, she said she witnessed firsthand Jolie’s "nasty" behavior when Jolie got together with Billy Bob Thornton, who at the time was engaged to and living with another one of Etheridge's friend, Laura Dern.
Jennifer Aniston and Melissa Etheridge together at an event in 2002. (Photo: Chris Weeks/FilmMagic)
Days after that interview, Etheridge appeared on Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live and said that Jolie’s “fixers” contacted her about her comments — and even sang a song about it called the “The Fixer Blues.” She said on the show that day, “I haven’t spoken to Brad in forever, certainly not since he was with Angelina ... every time I say something it gets turned around and twisted, and all of a sudden I’m saying something about her.”
Etheridge previously walked back comments she made after Jolie announced she had a preventative double mastectomy in 2013. The singer, who’s a breast cancer survivor, said she disagreed with Jolie’s medical choice being described as “brave,” instead calling it “the most fearful choice you can make.” Shortly after she clarified that she didn’t “have any opinion of what [Jolie] ‘should have' done. All are free to choose. I only objected to the term 'brave' describing it."
For the record, Etheridge said in 2013 that she also fell out of touch with Aniston. ("I haven't heard from her either,” she said told Us Weekly that year. “We all kinda got our own families and went our own way. It's funny we all were together and then it all went POOF.") It’s unclear if that remains the same.
