Minnie Driver is addressing her recent viral comments about ex-boyfriend Matt Damon.
The actors famously dated after meeting on the set of “Good Will Hunting” (1997), where they played characters who were lovers. They broke up mere weeks before Damon won the Oscar for best original screenplay and took another woman to the show — which Driver recently recalled after revisiting footage from the evening.
“Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this, and was at the Oscars with his new gf... I was devastated,” she wrote on Instagram in December. “Wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film!”
The clip showed Damon and “Hunting” co-writer Ben Affleck accepting their award, interspersed with reaction shots of people in the audience ― including Driver, who wore a melancholy expression.
Driver, who was herself nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for “Hunting,” appeared Thursday on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” to reflect on where she was at the time, and where she is now.
“First of all, I want to wrap my arms around that young woman and hug her and go, ‘It’s all gonna be fine, honey. Don’t worry,’” Driver told Hudson. “We’d recently broken up. I was nominated, he was nominated, the movie was so amazing, he had a new girlfriend.”
“I was totally heartbroken,” she continued.
Driver was all the more upset as Damon had recently announced they weren’t “romantically involved anymore” during an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” According to Driver, Damon hadn’t informed her of this personally, which she described as “fantastically inappropriate” in a later interview.
“Anyone who’s been heartbroken can understand... the last thing you want is everybody having a window in on that, and it was so public,” Driver told Hudson on Thursday, adding that what the cameras caught at the awards show was a “25-year-old girl who’s about to burst into tears.”
Kim Basinger beat her that night for best supporting actress, but Driver ― who recently celebrated her five-year anniversary with husband Addison O’Dea — attended this year’s Oscar parties without a reason to fret.
“Madonna throws an amazing party every year,” Driver said Thursday. “I gotta say, it was really spectacular.”