Just like many people, Justin Hartley is spending his time in quarantine analyzing his personal life and career. Amid a recent arm injury, which he tells ET's Rachel Smith is "all good now," the This Is Us star has been staying put in Los Angeles with his 16-year-old daughter, Isabella, and reflecting on his many blessings.
"From the time I remember, my parents will tell you that, when I was a kid, I was always reflecting on on my personal life and trying to be better, and that's an attribute probably to my parents," the 43-year-old actor, who filed for divorce from Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause last year, tells ET. "You're always trying to better yourself and hopefully my daughter has the same thing. COVID and the quarantine has given us all a little more time to sit there and really analyze, but not overanalyze."
"I'm a happy guy. I sleep like a baby. I don't have anything on my mind," he notes. "I treat people the way I want to be treated and I have lovely friends who love me and I love them. And I've got this wonderful daughter, and I've got a great family, and I am a very, very lucky, lucky individual."
While he is a "lucky individual," Hartley did suffer an injury while at home after he got himself a home gym, which caused him to tear his bicep.
"One of the things I did during this quarantine is I got myself a home gym, which I did not have," he shares. "It wasn't anything fancy, but it was something I could get the job done here at home because you can't really go anywhere. And I thought, 'I am going to get in the best shape of my entire life.'"
"I thought, 'You know what? Let's do something that I've never done before…I'm gonna turn myself into a machine,'" he recalls. "And that was kind of what I was doing and I did it. And I got there, and it was wonderful -- and then I pulled a muscle and it ended up not being a pulled muscle. It ended up being I tore my bicep off my arm."
"It's back on now. It's totally fine. We're good to go. But it's just a process that takes a while to heal," he reassures. "So all of those gains, all of that time and effort that I spent doing that, I'm almost back to square one now, which is, it's fine."
In May, fans noticed Hartley's arm injury when he was taken to the Southern California Orthopedic Institute. He also sparked romance rumors when it was his former The Young and the Restless co-star, Sofia Pernas, who drove him there. The two were photographed kissing.
A source told ET at the time that the pair were "newly dating and are enjoying their time together. The couple has spent time together during quarantine and has taken the time to get to know one another better, as they have worked together in the past but weren’t romantic."
ET reported back in November that Hartley filed for divorce from Stause after two years of marriage. He listed their date of separation as July 8, 2019, while Stause listed Nov. 22 -- the day Hartley filed his paperwork.
On Wednesday, eight months after the divorce filing, Stause got her maiden name restored. According to documents obtained by ET, Hartley and his ex participated in a voluntary settlement conference on July 13, during which her request to restore her name back to Terrina Chrishell Stause was approved.
The news came after Stause blasted her Selling Sunset co-star, Christine Quinn, for claiming to Page Six that the former couple visited a marriage counselor before filing for divorce.
"I just learned Christine is giving press 'information' about my divorce. Let me be VERY clear. She knows absolutely nothing about the situation and is obviously desperate to gain attention by doing so," Stause tweeted in response to Quinn's interview. "Anything from her is either a complete lie or total conjecture on her part."
"It’s so frustrating and unfortunate that someone would use someone’s personal painful situation to get press for themselves," she continued. "I can’t say I am surprised, but please check the source. She has absolutely zero knowledge of the marriage we had."
Stause also told ET in May that her and Hartley's fallout would play out on the Netflix series. "Obviously not something that I am looking forward to," she expressed.
"I obviously really, truly love him and it's unfortunate the way that everything happened and the timing of everything," she told ET while getting a little choked up. "I still had a month to plot shooting the show when this all went down. Hopefully we can get to a place where one day we will look back at this and laugh. I don't know, hopefully. It's very unfortunate and relationships are hard."
Meanwhile, Hartley told ET last month that he'd like to get back to work, and has been keeping in touch with his This Is Us family amid the pandemic.
“We talk more as a cast now than we have in any other hiatus… It’s a check-in with people who have become some of my dearest friends over the past four-plus years and who I’ve gotten to know pretty well,” he shared. “But I miss hugs and I miss laughing with people and ‘cheers’-ing people and pats on the back. I miss contact with people.”
“I try really hard not to take things for granted, but you end up doing that anyway just out of, I guess, human nature,” Hartley continued. “Even going to New York on a press tour or on vacation, something like this happens and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute.’ It’s been interesting to say the least.” He pauses, making a small admission. “I’m getting a little cabin fever-ish. I’m ready to… I would like to go back to work.”
For more on Hartley, see below.
RELATED CONTENT:
