Uh-oh. Could there be trouble in Nick Lachey land?
The studly singer appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman last night … but wouldn’t even utter the name “Vanessa Minnillo.”
Are they finished as a couple? Is Nick, once again, going Soul-O? No, not at all. Lachey has just made a choice to keep his private life private. (It’s a good thing for The Gossip staff that Dustin Diamond has decided to take the opposite approach.)
Anyway, here’s a partial transcript of the interview:
David Letterman: You haven’t been here in quite a long time.
Nick Lachey: It has been a long time.
DL: You were here with your then wife, the lovely Jessica Simpson.
NL: Yes indeed.
DL: You were doing a show that was on MTV about being a newlywed at the time and, I don’t want to make you feel, maybe you don’t feel bad, I can’t tell. But I would think that doing a show like that would maybe actually make the marriage stronger.
NL: Yeah. About that. [Audience laughs] Not so much. I don’t think so … It was among the dumber ideas I think I’ve ever seen executed in history.
DL: But at the time, there was every reason to do that show. People liked it.
NL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for a while, I think we actually enjoyed doing the show as well. It was just so invasive that it became a problem.
DL: Do you think that was why the marriage broke up?
NL: You know that’s one of those things where I think until you get enough hindsight and enough clarity and perspective, I don’t think you can really know what happened. But, I certainly think it was probably a factor.
** THG Note: Jess banging Bam Margera may not have helped.
DL: Are you still friends? Friendly?
NL: We are. And I think both of us have handled it about as well as we possibly could, under the microscope that we’re under and everything. But, I think, again, with time, it’ll give us a better opportunity to redefine our relationship.
DL: Now, when I got divorced years and years and years ago, I spent a considerable amount of time thereafter drunk. I mean, really drunk.
[NL and audience laugh]
NL: It wasn’t quite that bad but, I definitely think you go through different phases and there’s certainly a phase of, “Oh, I don’t care about anything—I’m going to throw myself into a little bit of booze and kind of numb the pain.” And I went through a little bit of that and came out on the other side and still have some sobriety left.
Pssst, he may not say it, but he also has a really hot girlfriend. Check out this Vanessa Minnillo picture and see for yourself.