If you weren’t already made aware by his satin shirts and tie-die tracksuits from the F1 press circuit, Brad Pitt is in the midst of an attempted comeback. While he was never ‘cancelled’, per se, and has been working continuously for decades, his reputation has suffered since his split from Angelina Jolie in 2016.

The former power couple ended on famously acrimonious terms, embarking on an eight-year divorce battle which involved disputes over the custody of their children and Jolie’s 50% shares of their French winery, Chateau Miraval, which she sold to a Russian oligarch. The latter of which is an ongoing saga that will see the exes meet in court when the trial begins next year.

There are a lot of unanswered questions regarding the end of their marriage – and the fallout since. The main one being Jolie’s allegations that Pitt subjected her to ‘years of abuse’ and that he was physically violent during a family plane journey from France to LA, prompting her to file for divorce. Pitt was cleared of wrongdoing after a federal investigation into the events of the flight and has always denied allegations of abuse. However, Jolie’s lawyers – who emphasised that she never wanted their case to go to trial – insist there are documents that prove her claims. In December, the judge ruled that Pitt must disclose those documents as part of the trial.

While once loyal supporters of the two actors and their relationship anticipate what will come to light during the trial, the main focus remains on the winery. The former couple bought Chateau Miraval in 2008 as a place to raise their family, launch a business and enjoy the fruits of their labour. It is also where they got married in 2014 with all six of their children present. However, according to reports, it quickly became the root of their troubles. Pitt, by his own admission, developed an unhealthy relationship with alcohol because of the business.

During a recent appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast hosted by Dax Shepherd to promote Pitt’s upcoming film, F1, the duo discussed getting to know each other in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Pitt called AA an ‘amazing thing’ and said, ‘I just thought it was just incredible men sharing their experiences, their foibles, their missteps, their wants, their aches, and a lot of humour with it. I thought it was a really special experience.’

Shepherd has himself been open about his struggles with substance abuse and alcoholism and asked if Pitt was ‘nervous’ to talk about his own experiences. Pitt assured him he was ‘quite at ease’. However, he did reveal he was a bit ‘shy’ before joining the group. ‘I was pretty much on my knees, and I was really open,’ he told the host. ‘I was trying anything and everyone. Anything anyone threw at me. It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the f*** up in some areas. And it just meant a lot to me.’

Later on in the conversation, Pitt called himself a ‘stubborn f***’. He added, ‘When I’ve stepped in s***, I’m pretty good at taking responsibility for it and owning up to it. And now it’s a quest to, you know, “what do I do with this? How can I right this?” And make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

The F1 actor then said he started to look forward to the sessions. All of which helped him embark on therapy with a similar degree of openness. ‘When I jumped into therapy then, I was just like, “And I did this and I did that and da da da da,”’ calling himself ‘desperate’.

It wasn’t the first time Pitt has discussed attending AA either. In a 2019 profile for the New York Times, he said he first joined the programme after his split from Jolie. ‘It was actually really freeing to just expose the ugly sides of yourself,’ he said. ‘There’s great value in that.’

While Pitt appears to have worked on himself and his issues with alcohol in the past decade, he is still somewhat estranged from his family. All six of his children – Maddox, 23, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 19, Pax, 20, Knox and Vivienne, both 16 – have stood by Jolie throughout the separation. Three of whom have dropped ‘Pitt’ from their surnames and Pax took to social media on Father’s Day in 2020 to publicly condemn Pitt and his behaviour, calling him a ‘world class ***hole’.

This context made some question another of Pitt’s press circuit confessions about the importance of family. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight at the F1 premiere in Mexico City, Pitt said, ‘when you get to my age, you realise how important it is to surround yourself with the people you love, the people that love you back. Friends, family, and that’s it. From there, we get to make things. It’s a pretty simple, I think, equation.’