In September 2021, John said of the timeline of their relationship, “I went to rehab in September, I got out in October, I moved out of my home from my ex-wife… Then in the spring I went to Los Angeles and met and started to date a wonderful woman named Olivia.” The two welcomed their first son, Malcolm, that November, and have gone on to get married and have another child, Méi, together.
A new GQ profile of John confirms that the pair initially met at Seth Meyers’s wedding in 2013 before reconnecting in early 2021. According to the publication, John was looking for a place to live, and Olivia sent him a friend’s info. What ensued was apparently “brief.”
“It wasn’t anything close to ‘dating,’” Olivia told GQ of their initial relationship. “I barely knew him.”
However, when Olivia told John she was pregnant, he was apparently into it. “It wasn’t necessarily ‘We’re going to be married and live together’ or any of that, but it was ‘I will be involved in some way,'” she continued, noting that they would talk or visit one another every few weeks.
Notably at this time, John was still in early addiction recovery. “It was like watching a man in a tsunami,” she continued, stating that he’d say he was afraid of relapsing. “I was watching someone newly sober, at the edge of a cliff, and I didn’t know him well enough to help him.”
The baby, according to Olivia, was “the one thing that made him seem light and happy.” Still, when she was six months pregnant, Olivia staged a “mini-intervention” where they agreed that she would administer random drug tests — which they still do.
“It’s like a relief,” John said. “I like to be able to not even have that be a question in her or anyone else’s mind. Something about peeing in that cup is like, I’m walking this walk. It gives me confidence.”
According to GQ, the pair then agreed to raise Malcolm as a couple two months before he was born.
You can read the full interview here.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.