Television star says he would take it back if he could, just to stop being so hated

Apr 11, 2012 07:21 GMT  ·  By
Jesse James insists he was a victim in the media scandal that cost him his marriage to Sandra Bullock
   Jesse James insists he was a victim in the media scandal that cost him his marriage to Sandra Bullock

Even after so much time after his marriage to Sandra Bullock went up in the flames of one of the biggest media cheating scandals in showbiz, Jesse James is still paying the price of infidelity, as he says in a new interview with OMG! Yahoo.

He's getting ready to come back on the small screen with a new reality series, but the events of the past couple of years still haunt him.

James' marriage to the Oscar-winning actress ended when the US tabloids found out that he'd been cheating on her with countless other women.

It was a stupid thing to do, he admits now, and he will regret it for the rest of his life. However, he is convinced that the way in which the public and the media treated him was unfair, to say the least.

“I think I’ve paid the price and then some, you know? I don’t know anybody anywhere that’s had to endure what I had to endure for basically infidelity,” the 42-year-old television star explains.

He's right in one regard: at one point, national glossies were referring to him as the “most hated man in America,” which is precisely what he was back then.

Even so, no one paid any attention to how James was really feeling at that time, he goes on to say. No one thought they might be overreacting when they chose to attack him for everything else he'd done until then, only because he had slept around on his wife.

“I stood up like a man and admitted my wrongs and what I did and all that did is make every [expletive] tabloid everywhere across the world come after me even harder. I’m strong. I can take it,” James explains.

“Everybody can take cheap shots and say I’m a horrible dad, and that I’m a Nazi, and all this other bull[expletive]. Give me all you got. Because you know what? I know inside what kind of a person I am. I know I’m an awesome dad. I’m devoted to my work. And I work hard to take care of my family,” he continues.

James is convinced he was the victim in the scandal that played out in the press for months on end, especially since he'd owned up to his part of the blame.

At the same time, he would want people at home to know that, if he could, he would take it all back: he wouldn't cheat on Sandra because that broke her heart.

“If I could go back and change the way I did things, and not hurt people, and not do things the way I did, of course I would do it that way. I would never consciously bring pain to anyone, especially the people I love. It is something that I have to live with,” James adds.