The notion became clear to him after watching TV series Laurel Canyon, before he realised their separation was “different”.
He told his co-stars: “The first time that I heard the phrase conscious uncoupling was to do with Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin,” he said, referring to when the actress and Coldplay frontman announced their break-up in a joint statement in 2014.
“And lots of people said at the time, ‘You’ve just split up, you’ve just dumped each other, why are you calling it conscious uncoupling?’
“And I thought, it’s just a fancy way of them sort of smoke screening the fact that they’ve ditched each other, but I didn’t realise that conscious uncoupling is a thing and there’s a book about it and it’s brilliant,” he expressed.