After nearly two decades years of marriage and three kids together, Billy Bush and his wife Sydney Davis have announced their separation.
A representative for the pair confirmed the breakup to The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, offering few details, but a glimmer of hope.
“They have separated for the moment to evaluate their life together,” the rep confirmed. “They love each other and their children deeply.”
“[They] are committed to a bright future.”
The couple shares three daughters, ages 12 to 18, and “separated for the moment” definitely leaves the door open to a future reconciliation.
That’s how they want it to read, at least.
Without question, the past year has been trying for the Bush family following the leak of an Access Hollywood tape that featured Billy.
You know the one we’re talking about.
It involved disturbing conversation between Bush and Donald Trump back in 2005 in which they were visiting the set of Days of Our Lives.
On the tape, then-candidate Trump bragged about grabbing women without consent and getting away with it because he was a celebrity.
“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss,” Trump confided in Bush.
“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Trump also regaled Bush with tales of how he tried to sleep with Billy’s co-host Nancy O’Dell. “I moved on her very heavily,” he recalled.
“I did try and f–k her … I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married,” Trump admitted.
“Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”
While Trump’s statements showed exactly the kind of person he is, 53 percent of white women still voted him into office a month later.
Bush, on the other hand, paid the price professionally and personally. Bush was fired by Today and apparently lost his wife in the aftermath.
Billy didn’t say any things of that nature on the explosive video, but he didn’t exactly sound like he objected to the “locker room talk.”
That, along with his general giggling like a middle schooler enamored by Trump’s boorishness, were enough to earn him the pink slip.
In a subsequent interview with ABC News in May, Bush said his daughter, Mary, was “really upset” and demanded answers for his behavior.
“I said, ‘Mary, it’s going to be OK. You know, don’t worry,"” he said. “And she said, ‘No. Why were you laughing at the things that he was saying”
“Why were you playing along with it, Dad? It wasn’t funny."”
Davis hasn’t publicly commented on the tape, but sources have described her as “furious” after watching it, which is hardly a surprise.
Still, Bush said in May of this year that his wife of nearly 20 years had supported him “the whole way through” the scandal.
“She was very understanding,” he said at the time.
“She knows very well the man she married.”