Sandra Bullock Breaks Her Silence on the ‘Traumatic’ Loss of Partner Bryan Randall: ‘I Wasn’t Allowed to Speak About It’

Sandra Bullock appeared on the ‘SmartLess’ podcast, breaking her silence about grieving her longtime partner Bryan Randall, who died of ALS in 2023.

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Sandra Bullock broke her silence on the SmartLess podcast about her longtime partner Bryan Randall privately battling ALS for years before his death in August 2023

Bullock said Randall’s diagnosis was isolating as she and their family navigated his illness during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Practical Magic 2 star eventually confided in close friends like Jennifer Aniston and Amanda Anka while honoring Randall’s wish for privacy

Sandra Bullock is opening up about the loss of her longtime partner Bryan Randall.

Appearing on a new episode of Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes‘ podcast SmartLess, Bullock, 62, recalled the “traumatic diagnosis” that led to Randall’s death at age 57 in August 2023. The photographer endured a private three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

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Randall “asked me not to share” his diagnosis, the Oscar-winning The Blind Side star said in the episode available to SiriusXM early access subscribers. (The episode will be widely available on Aug. 24.)

“I wasn’t allowed to speak about it. That was the request and I tried — I honored it,” Bullock explained.

“I know why he asked me not [to],” she said, while sharing that especially amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, “it isolated me in the process” to carry the “huge weight” of his diagnosis.

“I started grieving Bryan four years before he passed,” added Bullock, saying he “was ill for half of our relationship.” The actress and Randall co-parented her son Louis and daughter Laila, as well as Randall’s daughter from a previous relationship, Skylar Staten Randall.

“My person left a lot earlier than the body left,” the Practical Magic 2 star continued. “I don’t think I ever dealt with that until after he passed, because you’re just on this treadmill, you know?”

Recalling Randall’s symptoms, she called ALS “the process of elimination over the course of a year. And some where you keep going back and they give you all these milestones, these things to do, these grips, these breath tests, all these things.”

Bullock continued: “You have to quietly plan. And I’m a very good planner with illness,” she said, adding that her father had “accidents” and her mother had cancer. “It doesn’t scare me — not the illness itself, it doesn’t scare me. I can see and be around just about anything. But I had two young kids that were navigating it, especially a little girl who saw [Randall] as a father figure.”

Gesine Bullock-Prado, the actress’ sister, was the only person who knew about Randall’s diagnosis “for a while,” said Bullock, until she confided in friends including Jennifer Aniston and Bateman’s wife Amanda Anka. “When the physical illness was then coupled with the mental health aspect of things — and it’s something that people don’t talk about… it was a trifecta that was pretty dark.”

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In the wake of his passing in August 2023, Randall’s family shared at the time that he had died “peacefully after a three-year battle with ALS... Bryan chose early to keep his journey with ALS private and those of us who cared for him did our best to honor his request.”

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Randall, who was a model-turned-photographer, met Bullock in 2015. They took their relationship more public later that year when they made an appearance at Aniston and Justin Theroux‘s wedding.

Following Randall’s death, “she needed time to care for herself,” an insider previously told PEOPLE. “She spent a lot of time healing, being with her kids and being at home,” they added. “She needed to ensure that she and her kids were in the best possible place for her to go back to work.”

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Practical Magic 2, in theaters Sept. 10, features Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest reprising their roles from the original, plus Joey King, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, Lee Pace and Solly McLeod.

Bullock’s episode of SmartLess will be available on all podcast platforms on Aug. 24.