NEED TO KNOW
Samira Wiley and Lauren Morelli are going their separate ways.
The former couple filed for divorce on Friday, Jan. 30, following nine years of marriage and one child together, PEOPLE can confirm. That same day, they addressed the split in a statement to Out, which was the first to break the news.
“After nine years together we have decided to end our marriage, however, our lifelong commitment to co-parenting will forever remain,” the statement read.
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The exes first met on the set of Orange Is the New Black in 2012 when Wiley, 38, starred as Poussey Washington and Morelli, 43, served as a writer and producer. Morelli has opened up in the past about realizing she was gay when she began working on the hit Netflix series and was married to a man in an essay she penned on Identities.Mic.
“I realized I was gay in fall 2012, one of my first days on the set,” Morelli wrote in 2014, the same year she split from her then-husband.
“Accordingly, I was nervous about the first love scene I’d written for Alex [Laura Prepon] and Piper [Taylor Schilling],” she added. “I loved writing it, loved watching a tenderness emerge in their relationship where passion always seemed to be the ruling principle, but by that time, I was so deep in my own self-doubt that I constantly felt like a fraud.”
Wiley previously revealed that her sexuality became public without her consent by an unnamed OITNB co-star who named Wiley while discussing gay characters during an interview. At the time, she admitted that she “cried a lot” and even tried to have the interview “taken down,” but she is also “a strong believer of whatever is supposed to happen will happen.”
“I wasn’t out in the beginning and I think falling in love with Poussey, which is really a thing that happened to me, helped me fall in love with myself as well,” Wiley noted, later adding, “I think that if I wasn’t portraying these characters, I wonder how my own journey with my own sexual orientation, how I would embrace that, how I would walk the world if I wasn’t able to embrace the characters that I have been.”
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Morelli split from her husband in 2014, and she and Wiley tied the knot in 2017 in a ceremony in Palm Springs, California — which was a particularly special place, as it was where the two got engaged the previous October.
In April 2021, the pair welcomed their first child, daughter George Elizabeth. The Handmaid’s Tale alum announced the arrival of the baby in a post shared to Instagram on her first Mother’s Day that year.
“Happy 1st Mother’s Day to my beautiful wife, who four weeks ago today after laboring for almost 3 days gave birth to our first child — our gorgeous daughter, George.💜,” Wiley captioned an photo of their newborn grasping both her moms’ fingers.
“Welcome to the world, babygirl. We love you and we thank you for giving us the best 1st Mother’s Day two ladies could ask for,” she continued, revealing George’s birthdate as April 11.
Morelli shared the same snapshot in her own post, writing: “4 weeks ago today, our daughter came into the world and changed everything. We are so happy, so grateful, and so tired. George Elizabeth, 4.11.21 ❤️.”
