Gwen Stefani Says It’s Bittersweet To Rejoin Boyfriend Blake Shelton On ‘The Voice’ After Adam Levine’s Exit

Gwen Stefani is headed back to The Voice. But while you’d think she’d be overjoyed about the chance to work with her boyfriend Blake Shelton again, she has said that her return to the show will be “bittersweet” because Adam Levine is leaving.

During a recent interview on CBS’s The Talk, Gwen revealed that Adam was the person who encouraged her to become a judge on The Voice when she first joined the team several seasons ago.

“He texted me out of nowhere, and I didn’t even really know him [back then]. And he was like, ‘You got to do it. It’s the greatest show. It’s so fun!'” she said, as reported by Entertainment Tonight. “So, to think that he’s not going to be there [is] bittersweet.”

Adam Levine, one of the show’s original four judges, announced that he’d be making his exit from The Voice in late May. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, a member of his team has won the competition three times.

“For me, it was time to move on,” he said in the Instagram post that announced his departure.

“Thank you, NBC for signing me up. I am truly honored to have been a part of something I’ll always cherish for the rest of my life.”

So, during the next season of The Voice, Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, and John Legend will be sitting in the show’s iconic swiveling judges chairs.

Although her return might be “bittersweet,” The Voice has been something of a matchmaker for Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton. They met after she joined the judging panel in 2014 during Season 7. As a relationship timeline published by Billboard notes, within approximately a year, both of them announced that they were divorcing their previous spouses, Miranda Lambert and Gavin Rossdale.

During the next couple of months, they not only performed a duet together on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon but they were also reportedly seen holding hands at a celebrity party in October 2015.

After months of speculation, the two finally came clean about their blossoming relationship.

“Gwen and Blake are longtime friends who have very recently started dating,” a rep for Shelton said back then, as reported by Billboard.

So, although the show’s fans may miss the playful rivalry between Adam and Blake, they’ll hopefully get some cute moments between Blake and Gwen. If their social media posts are anything to go by, they both seem to be in love with the other and it should be fun to see that play out on screen.

The next season of The Voice premieres in the fall.