Brad Pitt Recalls First AA Meeting After Angeline Jolie Divorce

Brad Pitt discussed the first Alcoholics Anonymous recovery meeting he attended after his tumultuous divorce from Angelina Jolie, telling Armchair Expert host Dax Shepard — who was also at that meeting — “I needed rebooting, I needed to wake the fuck up in some areas.” 

Shepard noted that “a bazillion famous people” have attended this particular AA meeting, but acknowledged that Pitt’s presence was “overwhelming” in the kind of way you’d expect from a superstar. While Shepard said he wasn’t sure if that kind of atmosphere would allow Pitt to open up in the way recovery meetings require, that turned out not to be the case at all.

“You were so fucking honest,” Shepard told Pitt. “I was like, he must have a stubbornness like I have, which is like, ‘Yeah, all this is going on, but I refuse to let it not let me be a person.’”

Pitt admitted he hadn’t thought about the experience in those terms, and suggested his willingness to be open was a response to the dire state he’d found himself in. “I was pretty much on my back, on my knees,” he said. “I was really open to… I was trying anything that anyone threw at me. It was a particularly difficult time.”

While Pitt admitted to feeling some nerves at the start of the discussion, he said watching everyone else be “so open” gave him “permission in a way to go, ‘OK, I’m going to step out on this edge and see what happens.’ Then I just really grew to love it.” 

Earlier in the interview, Pitt remarked how “incredible” it was to be in a room with other men “sharing their experiences, their foibles, their missteps, their wants, their aches — and a lot of humor with it.” He added that it was a “really special experience for him,” especially having grown up in the Ozarks in Missouri, where people often mask their feelings and insist “everything’s great.”

Pitt previously spoke about attending AA after his split from Jolie in a 2019 New York Times interview, saying at the time, “It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself,” he said. “There’s great value in that.”

Pitt and Jolie’s divorce was precipitated by an infamous fight on a private plane, which reportedly began over the actor’s drinking. According to legal filings that emerged over the course of the couple’s long divorce proceedings, Pitt allegedly assaulted Jolie and two of their children on the flight. The FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigated the incident, but both concluded that no further action against Pitt was required. 

Pitt and Jolie’s divorce was finally settled at the end of 2024.