Michelle Branch has spoken about the dropped domestic assault charges brought against her, as well as her now-paused divorce from The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney, in an interview on The Tamron Hall Show.

The episode is set to air later today (September 15) but a preview sees Branch talking about being arrested on domestic assault charges. Back in August, Branch told police officers called to her home that she had slapped Carney in the face “one or two times”. Two weeks later, the case was dismissed at the request of the state.

“I don’t condone violence,” Branch told Hall. “What went down was so unfortunate. It was the worst night of my life.”

The same night, Branch accused Carney of cheating in a now-deleted Tweet that read: “To say that I am totally devastated doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel for myself and for my family. The rug has been completely pulled from underneath me and now I must figure out how to move forward.” She filed for divorce a few days later citing “irreconcilable differences”.

Yesterday (August 14) it was revealed that the pair had paused those divorce proceedings. 

“I’m only seven months postpartum from having a baby,” Michelle Branch told Hall. “Every parent in the audience knows this: sleep stress, life stress, marriage stress, work stress. And also we’d been out at a birthday party that night and I’d had a few drinks. All the blocks were stacked in a way that I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. It was one of those things that I was like, ‘Is this really happening? Did this really happen? Oh, I probably shouldn’t have tweeted that. Oh, I definitely shouldn’t have let my anger get the best of me.’”

Branch continued: “It’s unfortunate that it took this horrible, traumatic event [for] my husband and I to realise how we were going, was unsustainable.”

“Maybe this will give us the tools to have a stronger marriage than we’ve ever had,” she added, saying that she and Carney have started therapy. “So we’re rolling up our sleeves and doing the work, which never sounds like fun but we’re doing it.”

Branch and Carney met at a Grammys party in 2015, and began dating while working together on Branch’s 2017 album ‘Hopeless Romantic’, which Carney co-wrote and co-produced. They were married in April of 2019, and have two children – a son born in 2018 and a daughter born in February of this year.