Taye Diggs does not have a new wife. As of early 2026, the 54-year-old actor is single and has been open about the fact that he’s still searching for a lasting partner. His only marriage was to Idina Menzel, which ended in 2014 after more than a decade together. Since then, he’s had two notable public relationships—with Amanza Smith and Apryl Jones—but neither led to another marriage.
The confusion is understandable. Diggs and Jones were such a visible, entertaining couple during their 2022 run that plenty of people assumed it was heading somewhere permanent. It wasn’t. And the clickbait headlines claiming he married Jones are flat-out wrong. Here’s the real timeline.
QUICK FACTS
- Full name: Scott Leo “Taye” Diggs
- Born: January 2, 1971, Newark, New Jersey
- Only marriage: Idina Menzel (2003–2014)
- Children: One son, Walker Nathaniel Diggs (born 2009)
- Current relationship status: Single (as of late 2025)
- Notable relationships post-divorce: Amanza Smith (2014–2018), Apryl Jones (2022–2023)
Is Taye Diggs Married?
No. Taye Diggs is not married and has not remarried since his divorce from Idina Menzel was finalized in December 2014. He has been single since his relationship with Apryl Jones ended in 2023.
In a November 2025 interview with People, Diggs was straightforward about where he stands: “I’m older now and I have certain boundaries and my tastes have changed and my patience is low.” He described modern dating as an “interesting trip” and admitted his feelings shift constantly, sometimes wanting a relationship, sometimes imagining staying single for good.
“I’ll want to be in a relationship, having another kid, and then the next day I can imagine myself being single until I die,” he told the magazine while promoting his Lifetime movie His, Hers & Ours. “My moods are constantly swinging, so we’ll see how it ends up.”
That kind of honesty from a 54-year-old Black man in Hollywood about navigating love and loneliness isn’t something you hear often enough. Most actors at his level keep the curtain closed on that stuff. Diggs doesn’t. He’s talked about the awkwardness of dating apps, the weirdness of texting etiquette, the challenge of balancing fatherhood with a new relationship. He’s not trying to sell anyone a romantic narrative, he’s just telling the truth about being single in middle age, and that resonates.
Who Was Taye Diggs’ Ex-Wife?
Taye Diggs was married to actress and singer Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa in Frozen and the original Elphaba in Wicked. They met in 1996 while both starring in the original Broadway production of Rent and married on January 11, 2003. They separated in December 2013, and the divorce was finalized the following year.
The split wasn’t just another Hollywood breakup. Both Diggs and Menzel have spoken publicly about how the interracial nature of their marriage—he’s Black, she’s white and Jewish—created external pressure that weighed on them over time. On the Dinner’s on Me podcast in October 2023, Menzel said the “interracial aspect” was a bigger factor than career competition. She described how Diggs was appearing on covers of Essence and Ebony and being interviewed by Black journalists, and “it seemed like there was disappointment in the community” over his choice to marry a white woman.
Diggs himself addressed it in a 2014 Redbook interview: “I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times when I thought, ‘Oh, man, people are going to trip out.’ There weren’t a lot of couples like us in the theater community… and then you have the whole mixed thing. It was easy for people to root for us.”
That’s a dynamic worth sitting with. The Broadway world didn’t blink at their relationship. Outside of it, things got complicated, and neither of them has pretended otherwise.
Does Taye Diggs Have Kids?
Diggs has one son, Walker Nathaniel Diggs, who was born September 2, 2009. Walker is now 16 and is the only child from Diggs’ marriage to Menzel.
Co-parenting has been a consistent bright spot in how both Diggs and Menzel talk about their post-divorce lives. In a December 2022 appearance on People’s podcast, Diggs credited Menzel with running things: “She has a career and she has her own relationships and she still makes sure that Walker is where he needs to be when he needs to be. He’s got the best coaches and the best teachers, and we’re at the best schools, and it’s all because of her.”
On The Drew Barrymore Show in 2021, Diggs called Rent “the gift that keeps on giving” because it’s where he met Walker’s mother. Whatever happened between them romantically, neither has let it poison what their son sees.
Diggs has also written children’s books, including Mixed Me! and Chocolate Me!, which explore themes of mixed-race identity and self-acceptance. The books draw directly from his experience raising a biracial child and the conversations that come with it—how kids navigate identity when the world insists on picking one box. That’s not a side project. It’s clearly personal, and Diggs has spoken about wanting Walker to grow up confident in who he is, not confused by how other people see him.
Did Taye Diggs and Apryl Jones Get Married?
No. Despite what a wave of clickbait Facebook posts have claimed, Taye Diggs and Apryl Jones never married. They dated for roughly a year, from early 2022 to sometime in 2023, and then quietly split.
Diggs and Jones met after he slid into her DMs and told her she was hilarious, according to Essence. They went public in February 2022 through a string of funny TikTok videos and eventually made their red-carpet debut at the premiere of The Best Man: The Final Chapters in December 2022.
They were genuinely entertaining together. The playful chemistry in their social media content had people invested. But by 2023, it was over. Neither addressed the breakup publicly until September 2025, when Jones told Carlos King’s podcast that they’d gone to couples therapy but couldn’t bridge their different communication styles.
“We tried to understand each other. I think sometimes it doesn’t always pan out,” Jones told King. She also left the door open for the future: “Who’s to say something later on the line couldn’t revisit itself when folks grow up?”
By August 2024, Diggs confirmed to Essence that he was single and casually dating. Jones, for her part, has kept things cordial, she mentioned running into Diggs at a Hell’s Kitchen musical performance in New York and having a friendly exchange. No drama, no public shots. Just two people who gave it a real try and recognized when it had run its course.
Who Has Taye Diggs Dated Since His Divorce?
Between Menzel and Jones, there was Amanza Smith—now known to most people as a cast member on Netflix’s Selling Sunset. Diggs and Smith started dating in 2014, just months after his divorce was finalized, and were together for about five years before splitting around 2018.
Smith was candid about why it didn’t work. “Neither one of us was in the right place to date,” she said on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast in 2020. “He’d only been divorced like five months. If you’re the first relationship someone has fresh out of a divorce, it’s probably never going to work.” Even so, she called him “a beautiful human being.”
So the full post-divorce timeline: Amanza Smith (2014–2018), a few years without a public relationship, then Apryl Jones (2022–2023), and now single. Each relationship taught him something different, Smith came too soon after the divorce, Jones came with strong chemistry but communication gaps.
It’s a pattern that tracks for anyone who’s been through a long marriage and come out the other side trying to figure out who they are alone. The fact that both of his major post-divorce relationships ended amicably, with mutual respect on the record, says something about the kind of person he is. No scorched earth, no messy public fallout, just honest assessments that it didn’t work.
What Is Taye Diggs Up to Now?
Career-wise, Diggs stays working. After six seasons on All American as Coach Billy Baker (2018 to 2023), he’s stayed in the Lifetime and BET+ movie space. In 2024, he starred alongside Meagan Good in Terry McMillan Presents: Forever. His latest, His, Hers & Ours, premiered on Lifetime in November 2025—and the role hit close to home. He plays a single father in his 50s navigating a new romance.
“Being in your 50s, being single, being a Black man, trying to figure out if he’s ready for love,” Diggs told TheGrio. “That’s a very specific kind of genre. I can pull on life experiences way more than I was able to before.”
The man who played Winston Shakespeare in How Stella Got Her Groove Back nearly 30 years ago is now the one figuring out his own second act. He hasn’t given up on finding someone. He also hasn’t rushed it.
“I’ll never give up.”
