Christine Taylor is opening up about reconciling with Ben Stiller, and the story is less Hollywood fireworks than two people doing the unglamorous work of trying again. The actress said the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly gave the couple the time and space to repair their marriage after their 2017 separation.

Taylor, 54, spoke about the process on the May 26 episode of The McBride Rewind podcast, describing the pandemic period as an unlikely turning point for her family.

How the pandemic changed their marriage

Taylor said the slowdown brought the family back under one roof while everyone was going through major transitions. She and Stiller share two children, Ella, 24, and Quinlin, 20.

“If there was a silver lining for us during COVID, that was the little gift,” Taylor said. “We all kind of bubbled up together with the kids. Our daughter was graduating high school at the time, our son was graduating eighth grade.”

That shared time, she said, gave her and Stiller something they had not had enough of before: room to focus on the relationship without the usual distractions. Not exactly a glamorous pandemic hobby, but certainly more productive than reorganizing a pantry for the fourth time.

With “nothing but time,” Taylor said she and Stiller began working seriously on what had gone wrong.

“Ben and I spent a lot of time just working on us with a therapist,” she said. “We’d log into Zoom and we'd do our therapy sessions and really found the way back.”

Why Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller separated in 2017

Taylor and Stiller first met in 1999 on the set of Heat Vision and Jack. They married in 2000 and went on to build both a family and long-running public careers, with Stiller known for films including Along Came Polly and Night at the Museum, and Taylor recognized for roles including The Brady Bunch Movie.

In May 2017, the couple announced they were separating. On the podcast, Taylor said the decision came after a period of feeling out of sync.

“We were just not on the same page with a lot of things and working so hard to try to make it fit and make it right,” she explained, “and I think really when we kind of just zoomed out on it, it was like, ‘Let's just put a pause here.’”

Taylor said the choice made sense at the time, but that did not make it easy.

“It was not without, you know, a heavy heart and feeling really even dejected at the time of like, ‘This is not how I imagined it was going to be and we should have been able to work it out,’” she said. “I mean, it was challenging.”

Co-parenting kept the family connected

Even during the separation, Taylor said she and Stiller remained closely connected because of their children. Their relationship did not turn into a clean break, which is often the reality for parents, famous or not.

“We were always in contact,” she said. “We were co-parenting together. We were spending time together as a family.”

That continued contact appears to have helped make reconciliation possible. The pair were not starting from silence or distance. They had already been practicing a kind of partnership, even while their marriage was paused.

For viewers and longtime fans, that detail is probably why the story lands differently from a standard celebrity reunion. Taylor is not framing the reconciliation as magic. She is describing scheduling therapy over Zoom, parenting through school milestones, and slowly rebuilding trust. Less red carpet, more calendar invite.

Ben Stiller later confirmed they were back together

In 2022, Stiller publicly confirmed that he and Taylor had reunited. Speaking to Esquire at the time, the actor said the relationship had moved from separation into reconciliation.

“We were separated and got back together and we’re happy about that,” Stiller said. “It’s been really wonderful for all of us.”

He also called the reunion “unexpected” and said it was “one of the things that came out of the pandemic.”

Taylor’s latest comments fill in that brief explanation. The pandemic did not simply place the couple in the same house and solve everything. According to Taylor, it gave them the conditions to do steady, deliberate work at a time when their family was already gathered together.

The result, as both have now described it, was a second chance that neither appears to take lightly.