Julianne Hough is finally opening up about her decision to end her relationship with Ryan Seacrest.
The 36-year-old Dancing With the Stars cohost — who dated Seacrest, 49, from 2010 to 2013 — got candid about her past romance with the longtime American Idol host on a new episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
When Hough and Seacrest first got together in 2010, Seacrest had been working (multiple jobs) in entertainment for years, whereas her career was just starting.
As she gained fame as a professional dancer on DWTS and began starring in movies, “I was just flying, and I was experiencing things that I didn’t even know existed,” Hough told Shepard, revealing that she had “this insecurity” about her relationship with Seacrest amid his own high-profile fame. (The On-Air With Ryan Seacrest host was set to make a “$60 million” deal with radio at the time, Hough said.)
“I was like, I don’t ever want anybody to think that I’m with him for this reason,” the Safe Harbor actress explained, so she began “playing smaller.”
“You don’t want to seem like you were out there to try to get your own attention,” she noted, pointing out in the conversation that Seacrest had previously dealt with people “using him.”
TV personality Ryan Seacrest (L) and dancer Julianne Hough arrive at the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 13, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California. In 2024, eleven years after their split, Hough is finally revealing what went wrong in their romance.
Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Because Hough was so determined to not be that person, she “overcompensated” in the relationship. “[I] was malleable to fit into exactly what somebody needed me to be for them to be happy,” she explained.
The dancer recalled that when she told others in the industry she was breaking up with the radio host, they were stunned — and couldn’t understand why she would end their relationship. Hough, however, stuck to her guns.
“I remember when I decided to break things off, I had a lot of these Brentwood moms and producers in that world that were like, ‘What are you doing?'” she remembered. “And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ They’re like, ‘Your life is completely set up.’ And I was, like, ‘But I didn’t build it exactly. Like, it’s not mine.'”
Hough — who went on to marry (and divorce) Brooks Laich — noted that she’s still learning about herself as she navigates her love life.
“What I’ve realized over the years is I don’t know if I’ve ever truly been in love with someone, but I have loved the feeling of being loved,” she told Shepard.
As for Seacrest — who is replacing Pat Sajak as the host of Wheel of Fortune — he split from longtime girlfriend Aubrey Paige in April after three years together.
