Shawn Johnson’s wedding played a big role in her and Nastia Liukin becoming friends again.
Johnson, 32, revealed in a new interview with Access Hollywood that the famous gymnasts had a falling out after the 2008 Beijing Games, but they made up eight years later.
In 2018, the pair spoke about their friendship rift in a YouTube sitdown at Liukin’s Grander Summit in Boston. Liukin explained that she decided to “fix” things with Johnson after learning she wasn’t invited to Johnson’s 2016 wedding to Andrew East.
Their path to reconciliation started with Johnson writing an email that she described as “a love letter” to Liukin while sitting in an airport in Dallas, near Liukin’s hometown.
“If you don’t respond, I totally get it,” Johnson said in the letter, per NBC Sports. “Just know that I love you. I miss my best friend. I support you in everything you do.”
Liukin said she got the email while at a restaurant in Manhattan. She had just done an interview with The New York Times where she was asked if she was attending Johnson’s wedding to ex-NFL star Andrew East.
At the time, Liukin hadn’t received an invitation to the wedding.
“That’s when it really hit me because I was like, oh my gosh, this girl that I had been best friends with for so many years and this moment that’s about to happen in her life that is the biggest moment of her life, and I’m not going to be there,” Liukin said in the YouTube clip. “When [the reporter] said that, I was like, I have to fix this.”
The Russian-born athlete recalled going to the bathroom and crying over Johnson’s email. She immediately responded and the former teammates met up in New York a few weeks later.
Liukin later attended Johnson and East’s wedding on April 16, 2016 in Franklin, Tennessee.
She noted that Johnson “was the bigger person” by reaching out to her first, which led to them making up.
Liukin and Johnson were teenagers when they both competed at the 2008 Beijing Games. Their friendship fell apart at the time because of the public’s desire for them to be bitter rivals.
“You couldn’t like both. It was like ‘Twilight,’” Liukin said in the YouTube video. “As a 16- and 18-year-old girl … we were so used to any time somebody told us something, we believed it. We thought like that was right. Or that’s what was supposed to happen. Or that’s how we were supposed to act.”
Johnson added, “Right after the Olympics, the entire world like plotted us against one another. As soon as all-around hit, it was like Nastia or Shawn. … We kind of felt like, well, they don’t want us to be friends. They won’t allow us to be friends.”
In the Access Hollywood interview, Johnson said her and Liukin’s significant others intervened to help get the gymnasts back in touch.
“Our boyfriends at the time got so tired of hearing us talk about each other that they said, ‘Enough of this, just go talk to each other again,’ and we did,” the “Dancing With the Stars” champion revealed. “And ever since then, it’s just like we haven’t skipped a beat.”
“We both said the same thing, ‘I don’t know what happened but I miss you and I miss us,’” Johnson added of the reconciliation. “And it’s been that way ever since.”
Johnson won four medals at the 2008 Olympic Games, while Liukin won five.
They both retired from gymnastics in 2012.
