Paul Hauser Tells Stephen Colbert How God Saved His Marriage
By Movieguide® Contributor
While on THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT, actor Paul Hauser opened up about how finding Christ allowed him to find healing from addiction and save his marriage.
“I did a thing called ‘I Am Second,’” Hauser told Colbert, plugging the four-part mini-series. “I did this video documentary…[my wife and I] very vulnerably talk about our problems, and how we mended them, and how we got back together. It’s a beautiful story.”
Through the I Am Second series, Hauser and his wife, Amy, share their incredible journey of highs and lows. After falling in love and getting married during the pandemic, the couple’s marriage began to fall apart as Paul left to work on BLACKBIRD, for which he would go on to win an Emmy.
Though he left his wife of two months alone and pregnant with little support, this time in his life would prove to be transformational.
“This really changed my life, because I ended up getting sober in the middle of the shoot,” Hauser recalled on the show. “I was kind of in a rough place, personally. I was not the best version of myself.”
He went further in-depth during the docu-series, explaining, “I was conflict-avoidant. I was cold and cruel. I was definitely addicted to substances. And I definitely had an unhealthy sense of attachment to my former life, rather than honoring the new life God was giving me, both in my wife and in our child.”
However, while high and drunk at a strip club, far away from his family, Hauser came to understand Christ’s sacrifice and allowed himself to be changed by the Savior’s love. He has since realized where that toxic persona came from, which helped him embrace the new life found in Christ.
“I tried to take on the [persona of] other people that I deemed like me – Chris Farley, John Belushi, Phillip Seymore Hoffman,” Hauser said. “What I would later come to realize is that all those guys are dead. The common denominator is not just that they’re talented; the common denominator is that they’re all very depressed… and addicted… and died way too young.”
Paul and Amy hope their story can help any couple out there who is struggling and encourages others to root themselves in Christ so they can endure any trial thrown at them.
“We have moments that were taken from us, but there are days and moments where we live, and we look around us, and we just look at each other and smile,” Amy says in the documentary. “And we’re like, ‘Can you believe this is our life and where we were and what God’s done with our family?’”
Those interested in learning more about their story can watch the first episode of the docu-series here.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Actor Paul Hauser and his wife, Amy, recently shared their story, saying, “God wrote [it] to display His glory.”
“I think if we summarized our story, it’s a story of two people that were broken,” Amy said in an “I Am Second” interview. “It’s a story about faith, love, a lot of laughter. And It’s a story that no matter how far you run, Jesus is always coming after you, and you are never too far gone.”
Paul and his wife were at the beach when he confessed he had been “turning to a variety of things to deal with my anxiety, OCD, depression and past trauma. I had developed unhealthy coping mechanisms to numb my inner turmoil. And I had placed those above our relationship, willing to hold onto them at all costs.”
“Paul had family conflicts and inner turmoil he had been treating with alcohol and marijuana. And it didn’t take long before those band aides fell off. How long? Two months. Within two months of marrying Amy he separated from her. He cut her off. He didn’t attend the birth of his own son, having dug in his heels and becoming a hardened person,” I Am Second wrote.
