"The reaction to it was really a lot, and so we were like, 'Let's just politely decline [to talk about the relationship] for a little while and live in our little bubble.'"
Shailene Woodley is sharing details about her and fiancé Aaron Rodgers' decision to announce their engagement back in February.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter for their latest cover story, the actress revealed she and Rodgers kept their engagement a secret for "months and months" after they got engaged -- and explained why they decided to wait before they shared the news publicly.
Shailene Woodley Opens Up About Romance with Fiancé Aaron Rodgers
View Story"When we announced that we were engaged, we wanted to do that only because we didn’t want someone else to do it before we did," recalled Woodley, 29. "And we didn't do it for months and months after we had become engaged, but the reaction to it was really a lot, and so we were like, 'Let's just politely decline [to talk about the relationship] for a little while and live in our little bubble.'"
Only a few days after reports began circulating that Woodley and Rodgers were dating in early February, Rodgers revealed he was engaged during his 2020 NFL MVP award acceptance speech. However, he didn't name his fiancée at the time.
A couple of weeks later, Woodley confirmed her engagement to the Green Bay Packers quarterback, 37, during a virtual appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."
"Yes, we are engaged," Woodley told Fallon at the time. "But for us, it's not new news, you know? So it's kind of funny. Everybody right now is freaking out over it and we're like, 'Yeah, we've been engaged for a while.'"
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View StoryThe "Divergent" star and professional athlete first met last year during the coronavirus pandemic, with THR noting that they pair "met through mutual friends, who are musicians." The publication also said that the couple moved in together "within months" and went back and forth between Green Bay and Los Angeles.
"You could travel, but you had masks on," Woodley said. "There was a sense of anonymity that otherwise I don't think we would have had. We were really able to get to know one another the way we wanted to get to know one another and not have any noise or chaos around us."
The "Fault in Our Stars" actress previously spoke about "immediately" moving in with Rogers, telling Shape last month that it "taught us a lot about each other very quickly."
"We jumped in headfirst and got some of the sticky bits out of the way early," she told the magazine.
Although the couple may have had an untraditional courtship, Woodley said, "I have the perspective that I would have met Aaron in any context, any space in time, because I feel we were meant to be together."