Jessica Alba on her relationship with husband Cash Warren: "You become roommates"

Jessica Alba described her 13-year marriage to producer Cash Warren in blunt, unromantic terms during an appearance on Katherine Schwarzenegger's Instagram show "Before, During and After Baby," telling Schwarzenegger that the early passion of a relationship gives way to something far more mundane. "It's all rosy for two and a half years," Alba said, according to Fox News. "But then after that, you become roommates."

Alba, who married Warren in 2008 after the pair met on the set of 2004's "Fantastic Four," went on to describe the day-to-day flatness that follows the honeymoon period. "You're just going through the motions," she said. "You have the responsibilities." Yahoo Entertainment, which also covered the appearance, corroborated the same quote, reporting Alba's phrasing as "It's all rosy for two and a half years. But then after that you become roommates."

Neither Fox News nor Yahoo's coverage specifies the exact broadcast or streaming date of the Schwarzenegger show episode beyond placing the appearance in 2021, and neither outlet reports any response from Warren himself to Alba's remarks. Fox News dates its own article to July 31, 2021, which places the interview at or before that point; the precise recording date of the episode is not established in the coverage reviewed.

What Alba said about taking a partner for granted

Beyond the roommates line, Alba used the interview to talk about a broader pattern she said takes hold in long relationships: the comfort of permanence can curdle into neglect. "We have the friendship, the comfort of 'you're not going anywhere,' and sometimes you don't treat those people the best," Alba said, per Fox News. She extended the thought to describe an emotional double standard: "You don't consider their feelings in the way that you would consider other people's feelings."

Alba also connected the theme to her own growth, telling Schwarzenegger she hadn't always grasped how complicated relationship dynamics could be. "I didn't really understand the nooks and crannies of the complexity of feelings and relationship dynamics," she said, according to Fox News's account of the interview.

The marriage behind the comments

Alba and Warren's relationship dates to 2004, when Alba starred in "Fantastic Four" and Warren worked on the film as a production assistant, according to Yahoo Entertainment's account of the couple's history. The two married in May 2008 in what Yahoo described as a spur-of-the-moment courthouse wedding, about a month before the birth of their first child. At the time of the 2021 interview, Alba was 40 years old and the couple had three children together, Honor, Haven and Hayes, per Fox News.

Fox News's coverage frames Alba's comments as part of a wider conversation about motherhood and vulnerability, noting she discussed how having children pushed her toward being more open emotionally. The article does not report Alba describing her marriage as in crisis or heading toward a breakup at the time; the remarks are presented as a general reflection on long-term partnership rather than an announcement about the state of her own marriage.

What the record does not establish

The coverage reviewed here does not give an exact air date for the Schwarzenegger interview beyond the 2021 window, and it does not report Cash Warren's reaction to being described as a "roommate." The 2021 sourcing also does not address the couple's later relationship history; that is outside the scope of what Fox News and Yahoo reported at the time this story originally ran, and no claim about the couple's status beyond 2021 appears in this account.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Fox News and Yahoo Entertainment. It restores a story originally published on this site in July 2021; figures are as reported at the time.