Justin Baldoni may not strike you as the type of guy to draw comparisons to Family Matters mega-nerd Steve Urkel, but those who know him best see it differently.
The It Ends With Us star appeared on Erin and Sarah Foster’s “The World’s First Podcast” on Thursday, August 15 and opened up about how he’s become comfortable in his own skin.
“My best friend Jamey [Heath], my podcast cohost who runs my company, sometimes he looks at me and he’s like, ‘you look like Gaston but you act like Steve Urkel,’” said Baldoni, 40. “You’re so socially awkward. And I am.”
Baldoni discussed his personal evolution that led him to finding his wife, Emily Baldoni, whom he married in 2013. The pair have two kids, daughter Maya, 9, and son Maxwell, 6.
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He explained that Foxler is his third relationship and the first two ended when his girlfriends cheated on him.
“I developed a bit of a complex. Maybe I am the guy who falls in the snow…And so what do us men do, that feel like we’re the guy that falls in the snow? We pretend like we’re not,” he explained. “And we try to be the a—hole or the indifferent one. The aloof one. And we start to put on all these different masks of masculinity to figure out how we can be the guy who gets the girl, because it’s so damn painful to live in a world where you don’t have permission to be your full self.”
After finding Emily, the actor realized he didn’t have to hide his inner self anymore.
“One day, you’ve had enough and you realize that taking the mask off is the bravest thing you can possibly do,” he said.
When Baldoni learned to unapologetically be himself, he says, he could embrace his inner Urkel.
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“I was trying to always fit in and at the end of the day, I just embrace that part of myself and I have to learn how to love that part of myself,” he said. “And I found one that’s willing to love that part of myself. It took a while.”
He added, “It took me going through these relationships and eventually finding my wife to get there.”
Baldoni’s comments come the day after TMZ reported that the actor made Blake Lively feel “uncomfortable” on the It Ends With Us set.
Lively reportedly felt like Baldoni fat-shamed her by asking the on-set trainer how much she weighed prior to a scene where he needed to lift her up. Baldoni has a history of back problems and was looking for ways to train so he could prevent injury.
