- Hila Klein said on Instagram late Thursday that her husband, Ethan Klein, had an affair that lasted more than six months, and that the two have separated.
- The H3 Podcast crew said it unanimously agreed to stop working with Ethan or profiting from his involvement.
- The podcast is on indefinite hiatus. No return date or host lineup has been announced.
- As of Friday morning, Ethan Klein had not responded publicly.
Hila Klein says her husband cheated on her for more than six months, and the people who make the H3 Podcast have decided they won't work with him anymore. The show is on hiatus with no return date.
Hila, who co-hosts the podcast and founded the clothing label Teddy Fresh, posted her statement to Instagram late Thursday. She also said the couple has separated. The production crew put out its own statement soon after, saying the call to cut ties with Ethan was unanimous. Variety reported the story first.
The timing was fast. Ethan told viewers on Thursday that the podcast was pausing, and by that night the reason was out in public, followed by the crew's reaction.
he doesn't ease into it. After a short promise to tell the truth, she lays out the sequence as she lived it. She's living a nightmare she can't wake up from, she says, and for months she was handed one lie after another.
Something felt wrong and she told him so. The answers she got were dismissive, and nothing changed. She trusted him anyway because she loved him. Then he got caught in a lie, and for her that was the end of the marriage. The lying didn't stop, though. By her account the story kept shifting: first it was a kiss, then it was emotional cheating. Only after she kept pushing did he admit to an affair that ran past six months. She says she still doesn't know how far it went.
She described herself as being in survival mode, working through a separation, co-parenting and what she called unthinkable heartbreak. She'd loved and trusted Ethan for 20 years, she wrote, and he was her partner in marriage, in raising their kids and in business.
The staff statement went up on the show's own Instagram account. Short version: they're with Hila.
The longer version is angrier. Crew members said they were shocked and heartbroken when they learned about the affair, that they agreed right away not to keep working with Ethan or make money off his involvement, and that they're disgusted by what he did and the hurt it caused. They also said they're safe and sticking together. The last line told Hila, the crew and the audience that all three deserved better.
Ethan had announced the hiatus himself on Thursday, before Hila's post went up. It's rare for a production team to turn on the founder of its own show in public, and the statement made no attempt to soften that.
Ethan is 41 and Hila is 38. They started the h3h3Productions YouTube channel in 2011 after meeting in Israel in 2007, when she was serving in the military. They married in October 2012 and moved to the United States in 2015.
The podcast grew out of the channel, and Teddy Fresh got much of its early exposure by being plugged on the show. So the business and the marriage have been tangled up from close to the start.
H3 has been through public messes before. The Frenemies podcast with Trisha Paytas ended after a dispute over revenue and ownership, and Leftovers, the political show Ethan made with Hasan Piker, has since wound down. Both of those involved collaborators. This one involves the couple the whole operation is built around, and the crew has now picked a side in public.
Nobody has said.
Ethan created the podcast and is listed as its host. The crew says it won't work with him or earn from his involvement. Neither statement explains how those two facts fit together in practice, or who controls the channel, the brand and the production company, or what happens to sponsors and existing contracts. It's also unclear whether the crew plans to start something new without him.
Everything public about the affair so far comes from Hila. The crew's statement is a reaction to what she said and what they learned, not a separate account of events.
Ethan hasn't said anything. Variety said it reached out to him for comment, and other outlets reporting Friday noted the same silence. None of the statements names the person he allegedly had the affair with, and nobody has said whether legal steps are coming.
The H3 Podcast's channels haven't posted a return date.
