Greg Wise has revealed that therapy helped save his marriage to Emma Thompson after repeated failed IVF attempts left the couple emotionally torn apart.
The couple welcomed their daughter Gaia, now 26, when Emma was 40 following IVF treatment. During Gaia’s second year, they decided to try for another child using the same method.
But the treatment was unsuccessful, and Greg now says the repeated failed cycles created a painful divide between them.
The actor explained that the experience left them unable to communicate and feeling increasingly isolated as they struggled to have a second child.
Greg discussed the ordeal on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, where he said therapy ultimately brought them back together and protected their relationship.
He said: ‘We had been together for three or four years. We decided we wanted to start a family and found out that we couldn’t. We had the tests and went to New York for IVF, where we saw a large collection of four cells. Three were put back in.
Greg Wise has revealed how therapy saved his marriage to Emma Thompson after failed IVF attempts left them unable to conceive another child
‘Almost exactly on her 40th birthday, I think, we found out she was pregnant, and that four-celled thing became our daughter.’
‘During Gaia’s second year, we tried again and failed, then tried again and failed. IVF is brutal anyway, and it brings so much baggage. It feels like the most authentic form of failure because this is why we’re here, to procreate, and you feel that you’re not a man or woman if you can’t. We’re brought up with the fables that all boys grow up to be fathers and all girls grow up to be mothers.’
Looking back on how they survived the grief of secondary infertility, he said: ‘It took us a very long time to dig ourselves out of that hole, and we didn’t get help with it. At the same time, we had our gorgeous daughter.
‘There was the pull of the exquisite love we felt for her, alongside the jarring pain of knowing we might not be able to give her a sibling or have another child ourselves.’
Elizabeth asked whether they had been able to support one another, saying: ‘Were you able to find each other in that? Were you able to talk to each other about it?’
But Greg admitted: ‘No. No. No, no, we were dislocated.’
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He was also asked what it felt like to be the man in the situation, given that the IVF process is focused largely on the woman undergoing treatment.
He said: ‘The process is all about the woman, filling her with various hormones to stimulate things and then harvesting the eggs. As you know, it’s a brutal process.
The couple welcomed their daughter Gaia, now 26, through IVF when Emma was 40, and tried the treatment again during Gaia’s second year (Greg and Emma pictured with Gaia in September 2025)
‘Where I was in myself at the time, I was the saviour figure, but I couldn’t save Em. There was nothing I could do. Dispassionately, it wasn’t my gig. She was the one undertaking all of this.
‘All I could do was support her and try to soothe her rather than myself. So you get into this terrible spiral, this cycle.
‘Luckily, we found our way through it. But I know couples who were unable to remain together after failed IVF.’
‘IVF is about creating a human being, yet the process is utterly dehumanising. You’re made to feel incompetent or geriatric, and Em was 40, with people talking about dried-up eggs or whatever, while she was subjected to a barrage of injections that completely transformed her system.
‘All of that madness takes place while you’re trying to remain resolutely calm and available.’
Greg said their daughter Gaia also helped them through the darkest period of their lives.
‘Here we are. Luckily, we are a family. We do have a child whom we love,’ he said.
‘We also get our idea of what a family should look like from the families we grew up in. We both came from families with two children.
‘That’s a family. That’s what it looks like: mum, dad and two children. We’ve only got one. We’re not a family. We’ve failed. It takes a while. And, of course, when you have a little person, your heart is so open.’
‘I went into therapy. Therapy saved my life and our marriage, without a doubt. I wouldn’t be sitting here without therapy,’ he added.
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