“It was one of those nights.” That’s how Reese Witherspoon described the April evening she was arrested for disorderly conduct while husband Jim Toth was arrested for DUI.
After canceling her earlier appearance on “Good Morning America,” the “Mud” star sat down on the morning news program on Thursday (May 2) to open up about the night she and her husband were arrested in Atlanta, blaming it all on the alcohol.
“We had one too many glasses of wine. We thought we were fine to drive. We absolutely were not and it’s just completely unacceptable, and we are so sorry and embarrassed,” she went on to say on “GMA.” “And we know better and we shouldn’t have done that.”
She continued, “And you know, it was just poor judgment and we made a mistake. And it was absolutely something that will never happen again — just bad judgment, you know.”
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Witherspoon also cleared the air about some of her statements that night, including when she reportedly asked the police officer, “Do you know my name?”
“I have no idea what I was saying that night. I saw him arresting my husband and I literally panicked and I said all kinds of crazy things. I told him I was pregnant. I’m not pregnant. I said crazy things and you only hear my lagging because I have no idea what I was talking about,” she said. “And I am so sorry. I was so disrespectful to him. I have police officers in my family. I work with police officers every day. I know better and it’s just unacceptable.”
Witherspoon said that she’s been in contact with the police department since the incident, when Toth, a Hollywood agent, was also arrested for DUI. “Yesterday I spoke to them and again said there’s no reason to be disrespectful to a police officer,” she explained. “All I can say was I was just panicked.”
While there’s been some bad press to deal with in the aftermath, Witherspoon noted that the hardest part of it has been telling Ava and Deacon, her tweenage children with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe.
“I have to say, that’s the hardest part about it and having to tell our kids,” she said. (She also has a son, Tennessee, with Toth.) “And you know just embarrassed and we have to say, ‘When you make a mistake you take responsibility.’ And we are taking responsibility and doing everything in our power to make it right. You just have to be honest with them.”
Witherspoon said she has learned a few lessons from the incident — including a few she never learned playing Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde.”
“There’s so many lessons learned. You know I will always, when a police officer tells you to stay in the car, you stay in the car,” she said. “I learned that for sure. I think I played a lawyer in a movie so many times, I think I am a lawyer. And clearly I am not a lawyer ’cause I got arrested. So I learned a lot.”
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