and only mended their years-long rift at the behest of their respective significant others.
“Nastia and I were best friends training and at the Olympics, we were roommates,” Johnson East, 32, told Access Hollywood in an interview published on Monday, November 4. “We were 16 and 18 years old; we were kids. I felt like we were under the spotlight and scrutiny so much to be each other’s top, biggest competitors.”
According to Johnson East, she and Liukin, now 35, had “figured out” how to be both best friends and competitors at gymnastic meets.
“But when the world started interjecting [with] how we should handle it, they said we should also be each other’s worst enemies as well,” Johnson East recalled. “So, we didn’t speak for eight years. And eight years later, our boyfriends at the time got so tired of hearing us talk about each other that they said, ‘Enough of this, go talk to each other again,’ and we did.”
Since then, Johnson East and Liukin “haven’t skipped a beat” in their friendship.
“We’re each other’s biggest fans, best friends, biggest supporters and we just love each other,” Johnson East gushed on Monday. “It was also just really confusing for both of us ‘cause we were really nervous [and] we didn’t know how to rekindle that.”
After their respective boyfriends’ pleas to reconcile, Johnson East and Liukin agreed to have lunch together in New York City.
“It was truly within, like, two minutes [that] we were back to being best friends,” Johnson East recalled. “We both said the same thing of like, ‘I don’t know what happened, but I miss you and I miss us,’ and then it’s been that way ever since.”
The two retired gymnastics made their Olympics debut in 2008 as part of Team USA, both medaling in multiple tumbling events. They rehashed the falling-out in a 2018 YouTube video.
“There wasn’t, like, an incident. Like, ever,” Liukin said at the time, citing they started listening to the outside noise about being competitors. “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.”
Liukin added, “The more and more time that went on, I think we realized we wanted to fix it, but we almost, like, didn’t know how because it just had been so long. Shawn was the bigger person.”
Liukin later attended Johnson East’s 2016 wedding to NFL alum .
“I can’t wait to watch you become Mr. & Mrs. East today,” she tweeted earlier that weekend.
