David Arquette Admits Dealing With Ex-Wife Courteney Cox's 'Friends' Fame Was 'Difficult'

David Arquette discusses handling different degrees of celebrity in a Hollywood romance.

Andy Cohen, host of SiriusXM's Andy Cohen Live, questioned the Never Been Kissed actor if he felt "inferior to" or "less than" ex-wife Courteney Cox at the height of her Friends stardom. (Cox, 58, played Monica Geller in the sitcom for ten seasons, from 1994 to 2004.)

"Sure, absolutely. It's challenging.... "I have some traditional male things where I want to provide and pick up the bill and, you know, be the breadwinner," Arquette, 51, explained.

"In the acting world, in general, you're always going on this roller coaster of popularity and not being able to get a job," he continued. "So it's like this strange thing. And then, when you're comparing yourself to someone at the pinnacle of television iconicity, it's difficult to put oneself there."

Arquette stated that the now-exes were "definitely" "learning and dealing with that" throughout their time together. However, there was still "a lot of pain and arguments" as well as "ego" in the beginning.

Arquette described how the couple handled the situation, adding, "A lot of it has to do with the way you're taking things, the way you're saying things, the way you're responding to things, the way you're allowing other, sort of, outside influences to affect how you feel about yourself."

"I think building confidence or just focusing on yourself, like working out some of the pain and trauma that I had so that I could open up and own sort of what makes me happy, what my needs are, and where my boundaries are," he went on. "But in the end, we had a really great thing." I just think that when partnerships break and attorneys become involved, a lot of people end up fighting a lot of the time and spending a lot of money on lawyers when they should be sharing with each other."

"I just encourage people to truly try to work it out," he added.

From 1999 through 2013, the two Scream co-stars were married. Despite their divorce, Cox and Arquette have remained friends while co-parenting their 18-year-old daughter, Coco.

Arquette discussed his "really great relationship" with the Cougar Town alum in a 2020 interview with Yahoo! Entertainment. "We're friends, and we've communicated a lot because of Coco," he said.

However, Arquette admitted that the process hasn't always been easy, particularly when it came to raising Coco during her adolescence.

"We've just been open and supportive of one another." "Through the process of divorce and raising our child, we never went head to head, [or] battled each other," he stated. "So it's made for a respectful friendship and relationship."

Arquette and wife Christina McLarty have two sons, Charlie West, 9, and Augustus Alexis, 6. Meanwhile, Cox is currently dating Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol.