The disgraced Try Guys star Ned Fulmer is looking back on the cheating scandal that stopped his career in its tracks and put his marriage on edge.
In a new interview with People, the 38-year-old YouTube opened up about how he broke the news to his wife Ariel and tried to rebuild his life and marriage.
But Fulmer’s update arrived shortly before a report that he and and his wife have allegedly split after 15 years of marriage.
Sources told TMZ that the Try Guys star is no longer romantically involved with his wife.
The Daily Mail has contacted Fulmer to request comment but hasn’t yet received a response.
His new interview marks the first time that he has publicly discussed his extramarital affair since he admitted to cheating on his wife with an employee of the Try Guys organization in a since-deleted statement posted to Instagram in September 2022, which led him to be fired from the group.
The disgraced Try Guys star Ned Fulmer, 38, opened up about his attempts to save his marriage in an interview with People published on Tuesday; seen in 2019 in NYC
But TMZ subsequently reported that Fulmer and his wife Ariel have separated after 15 years of marriage; pictured together in 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada
Fulmer said he was speaking up about his affair in an effort to help him ‘move on into a new chapter’ of his life.
‘For a long time, I wanted nothing to do with social media or the internet,’ he said, referencing his almost complete disappearance from social media in the wake of the cheating scandal. ‘I didn’t think it was particularly beneficial to my mental health.’
Fulmer outlined to the publication how he confessed his affair to his wife Ariel — whom he said was the person he ‘cared the most about’ — before he set about ‘trying to understand why I had done what I had done.’
He admitted that it was ‘devastating’ when he came to understand just how much ‘pain’ he had subjected his wife to with his infidelity.
‘If I were looking at a past version of myself, how I’d really want to change [is] the way I’d been interacting with her,’ Fulmer admitted.
Part of his efforts to repair the damage involved going to couple’s counseling with Ariel, though he admitted that he wondered if it was even possible to revive their wounded marriage.
According to the former Try Guys star, he came to realize that honesty was a major stumbling block in his marriage, so he and Ariel worked to put his cheating behind them by creating a ‘foundation of trust’ between them.
‘It’s certainly stronger than it was before,’ he claimed of his marriage. ‘We have a much clearer sense of boundaries — understanding and respecting each other’s boundaries — as well as integrity and being direct with each other, even when it might be unpleasant.’
Fulmer was fired from the Try Guys (pictured together in 2019 in NYC) after he admitted to having an affair with an employee of their organization in September 2022
Fulmer, who disappeared from social media afterward, said it was ‘devastating’ when he came to understand just how much ‘pain’ he had subjected his wife to with his infidelity; pictured with Ariel in September 2022
Fulmer also claimed that ‘every cent’ that went toward couple’s therapy was money well spent due to the measurable ‘improvements’ in his family life.
But the ‘place of healing’ that he and Ariel had reached was shaken up after he admitted that he missed having a creative venue after the three other Try Guys kicked him out of their group.
‘I started to want to create and miss making things,’ Fulmer said. ‘I mean, I’m the type of person that’d be in a community theater show getting paid nothing. I just love it.’
Out of that desire was born his new podcast Rock Bottom, where he says he plans to speak with ‘anyone who’s overcome something challenging’ about the lowest points in their lives.
‘It’s made me a lot more interested in other people’s challenging times,’ Fulmer said of his own public shunning. ‘When someone does something that they’re really ashamed about or that is deeply traumatizing, life goes on. So what happens next?’
He’ll get a chance to speak about his own low point during the premiere on Wednesday, September 17, when he sits down for a conversation with his estranged wife.
‘The conversation was so brutal at times that we wanted to get up and walk out of the room,’ Fulmer said. ‘It’s one thing to talk about in a therapy setting. It’s a really hard thing to have that conversation in such a way where you know people are watching it. But once we watched the full episode, it was something we were really proud of.’
The YouTube star also noted that his new podcast will be a stark departure from the light-hearted comedy of the Try Guys after he underwent a profound change ‘as a person and as an artist’ as he tried to prove that he wasn’t just a ‘caricature or this one-dimensional type of person.’
He now plans to launch a podcast called Rock Bottom, with his wife as his first guest on September 17. ‘The conversation was so brutal at times that we wanted to get up and walk out of the room,’ Fulmer said; seen in 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada
Fulmer admitted that he had created a public persona of a ‘wife guy’ while performing with the Try Guys thanks to his public declarations of love for Ariel.
‘It was something fans seemed to resonate with and I leaned into consciously. It certainly was a part of my life,’ he said, adding that it ‘must have been really painful and devastating to the viewers’ to see him in a new light.
Fulmer admitted that the way he acted toward his wife on camera was ‘obviously not how real relationships work.’
However, he said he hopes they have found solid footing after deciding to keep their relationship more private, while also no longer allowing their children to be in front of the camera.
In response to criticisms that he was allegedly just rehashing his personal failings for a money-making venture, Fulmer claimed that plenty of his fans wanted him to come clean about the affair.
‘As a creator, you have a responsibility to reestablish the context of who you are after something like that,’ he said. ‘I know that addressing the past is something that people care about and want to hear about from me, so it’s kind of this necessary step to move into a new chapter.’
Despite his claims of a stronger relationship with Ariel, sources told TMZ on Tuesday that Fulmer and his wife were no longer together.
The publication also obtained a photo of him with an unidentified woman at the Zebulon music club in LA on September 7.
His rep confirmed later on Tuesday that he and Ariel have separated, though the timing remains fuzzy; pictured in 2019 in LA
A witness claimed they saw Fulmer speaking to the mystery woman for ‘a really long time,’ though they made it clear that there was no obvious PDA between the two.
They added that he seemed to have accompanied the woman to the venue.
Later on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Fulmer confirmed that he and Ariel have separated in a statement to People.
They said that he ‘cares deeply’ for his estranged wife, with whom he is allegedly working on a new, unspecified project. The spokesperson added that the former couple vacationed in Greece over the summer with their two young children, though it’s unclear if they had separated at that point.
