Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson hadn’t crossed paths in 20 years. Then, they ran into each other on the same flight. Lachey, 52, confirmed the run-in Wednesday on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” telling host Cohen the details of their surprise meeting.
“It was strangely okay,” Lachey told Cohen about running into his ex. “It’s been 20 years, and we hadn’t seen each other in those 20 years, and then spent six-and-a-half hours on a flight to Hawaii together — when I say spent (I mean) the same vicinity. Everyone was very cordial, very respectful.”
Cohen then asked if Lachey’s wife Vanessa was also on the flight. “Yeah, our whole family (was there),” Lachey replied, noting Simpson’s mother and children were also on the plane.
Lachey, the 98 Degrees frontman, and Simpson, the Texas-born pop singer behind “Irresistible” and “With You,” married in 2002. A year later, MTV launched “Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica,” the reality series that turned their domestic life — and the now-immortal “Chicken of the Sea” tuna debate — into appointment television. The show wrapped in 2005. The couple separated that November and finalized their divorce in 2006.
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Their post-split paths diverged sharply. Lachey began dating former MTV host Vanessa Minnillo in 2006 after she appeared in the music video for his solo single “What’s Left of Me.” The two married in 2011 on Richard Branson’s Necker Island and have three children.
Since 2020, the Lacheys have co-hosted Netflix’s “Love Is Blind,” which the streamer renewed for an 11th season set in Boston, set to premiere in fall 2026. Lachey also hosts the Netflix spinoff “Perfect Match” solo, and won Season 5 of “The Masked Singer” in 2021.
Jessica Simpson Now: New Music, a Memoir and an Eric Johnson Split
Simpson married former NFL tight end Eric Johnson in 2014, and the couple shares three children: Maxwell, 13, Ace, 12 and Birdie, 7. Along the way, she stepped back from music to build the Jessica Simpson Collection, a fashion and footwear line that, at its peak, was reported by Forbes to be valued at $1 billion.
The last 18 months have brought some change, as Simpson announced her separation from Johnson in January 2025 after a decade of marriage. A month later, she released “Use My Heart Against Me,” her first new single in years, and followed with the EP “Nashville Canyon” — her first project since 2010 and a pivot from pop toward Americana and soul. She made a cameo in Ryan Murphy’s Hulu series “All’s Fair” and, in January, signed with Independent Artist Group for representation across music, television and books.
The mid-air encounter comes six years after Simpson’s 2020 memoir “Open Book,” in which she wrote that she and Lachey weren’t the kind of people who could “divorce and stay friends” and that she regretted hurting him. Lachey, who said at the time he hadn’t read the book, told the “Today” show there was “mutual respect” between them.
Now, after all these years, the two exes met again randomly, and considering how drama-free it all was, it’s clear the respect is still there.
