It’s been five years since 90s icon and Hallmark star Rachael Leigh Cook finalized her divorce from fellow actor Daniel Gillies in 2021. But the former couple is in a great place as co-parents to daughter Charlotte, 12, and son Theodore, 11, with Cook even calling her ex “incredible” during an episode of the “I Love You So Much” (ILYSM) podcast on May 13, 2026.
In a candid conversation with the co-hosts of ILYSM, actor Tyler Labine and writer Reed Fish, the “She’s All That” alum opened up about what led to her divorce, as well as how she’s navigated the dating world and her creative career ever since, learning a lot about herself along the way.
Rachael Leigh Cook Admits She & Her Ex-Husband Weren’t the Best ‘Fit’
Cook, who starred with Luke Macfarlane in the January Hallmark movie “Caught By Love,” talked openly on ILYSM about her breakup with Gillies, admitting that some of her personality traits clashed with his.
“Daniel’s incredible,” she said of Gillies when asked about their co-parenting arrangement, adding that she “can take accountability for” some of the distance that grew between them as a married couple.
“It would be really easy, I think, if you were Daniel, to feel like I didn’t really need him that much,” Cook reflected. “I think that I built and lived out my life very much that way. I had a strong network of friends. I have my family here. And Daniel really likes to be able to be there, step up, do the thing. You know, he’s really good at that.”
“In that sense, aside from being good at having a common enemy with me when it was time, which he kills at,” she smiled, “and then in the raising of our children, of course, he’s also awesome (at) — but I don’t think that I, sort of, gave him an ability to be able to execute on something that’s a major skill that he has.”
She continued, “How much can you love on someone who’s, like, ‘We’re (just) here for the good times, I don’t feel like fighting with you.’ I’m also, like, light touch avoidant, probably.”
Cook said that she and Gillies knew that they were “not so much a fit” as time went on, but that she was initially very attracted to his ability to not care about what others thought of him — a stark contrast to her lifelong tendency to be a “people pleaser” like her dad.
“I thought that that was cool,” she said of his carefree attitude, “and my life has been a lot of pendulum swings between, like, being involved with people who embodied different traits in that way.”
Rachael Leigh Cook Says Her Husband Knew She Couldn’t Handle ‘Challenging Content’ & Hallmark Helped Her Embrace That
GettyWhen Labine asked Cook about her career path and gift for creating hit rom-coms, she reminisced about a disagreement she and Gillies “always had” when they were married, recalling that he would tell her she couldn’t “handle challenging content.”
She laughed, “I was like, ‘That’s not true!’ That was 100% true, Daniel. You win. I’m still upset about this movie I saw that’s about a Japanese little boy who drowns in a bathtub. Like, I can still think about it and cry. I cannot handle challenging content.”
But before she allowed herself to realize Gillies was right about that, Cook admitted she had some “resistance to working for the Hallmark Channel” because she thought it might be “a little bit too soft, like it was sort of playing into my fears that I had about myself.”
“And then I was just like, ‘Nah, screw it. This is who I am. I’m a huge cornball and I love love,'” she smiled. “And so I went and I worked for them, and they’re so supportive of women and of their actors, and they’re honestly just doing so much that they don’t, like, handcuff you to the words and the punctuation (in scripts) and all of this stuff. They really give you a lot of creative freedom.”
“So that was really empowering,” Cook continued, noting that her work with Hallmark “set me on a journey of, you know, wanting to tell stories. And I’ve always been so earnestly enthusiastic about the romantic comedy genre. I drink that Kool-Aid all day. I make it in my kitchen, it’s in my veins.”
Rachael Leigh Cook Says She Learned Lots From Dating After Divorce
GettySpeaking of loving love, Cook has been dating fellow Hallmark actor Brandon Routh since last year. Routh, who last appeared in 2025’s “A Keller Christmas Vacation” with Jonathan Bennett, was married to actress Courtney Ford for 17 years and they share a teenage son. They announced their amicable split in January 2025.
Cook admitted on the ILYSM podcast that diving back into dating after divorce wasn’t a smooth process for her, sharing, “I had a good little bit of lessons with regret. I was feeling really down on dating before I met my now-boyfriend.”
However, she chose to look at those experiences as teachable moments, explaining, “Instead of feeling mad at all the … rough dates or brief dating experiences that I had had, I wrote out a list of everything I learned from every single … person I went on a date (with) or was in a short relationship with.”
She then said, “And I was like, ‘I learned so much stuff!’ I learned so many things about what I do and don’t want, but also just like accidental bits of knowledge that they taught me. I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t have learned any of these things.’
