Tuomas Holopainen has gone back over the end of Tarja Turunen's time in Nightwish in an interview with Metal Hammer, and the part that stands out is that he does not defend how it was done.
Turunen was dismissed at the end of the 2005 tour by an open letter handed to her and published on the band's website at the same hour. The band get blamed for it "for good reason", Holopainen said, while maintaining there was no future for the group with her in it. "We were just operating in survival mode and plagued by these dark thoughts."
What followed he remembers as being "completely butchered in the media". "It was like we were these evil neanderthals who'd hurt our wonderful ex-singer," he said. "I got some really interesting letters, let's put it that way."
On the question that will not go away: "It was a divorce, and an ugly one at that, so I think we have our own lives now. Someone did say to me if we got Tarja and Marko back in, we could tour just South America for a year straight. That's not gonna happen." Marko Hietala, who sang and played bass, left in 2020.