logo
Hugh Jackman's ex-wife Deborra-Lee Furness to release shock 'tell-all memoir' in the form of a 'divorce diary', source claims

Hugh Jackman's ex-wife Deborra-Lee Furness to release shock 'tell-all memoir' in the form of a 'divorce diary', source claims

Sky News AU2 days ago

Hugh Jackman's ex-wife Deborra-Lee Furness is reportedly preparing to release her "divorce diary" in the form of a tell-all memoir.
Furness, 69, and Jackman, 56, separated in September 2023 after 27 years of marriage in a surprise move that shocked Hollywood insiders.
Jackman has since gone public with his new relationship with his Broadway co-star Sutton Foster, whom he first met in 2021 while they were both still married and starring in the musical The Music Man.
In May, a New Idea source said Furness was "shattered" by the news Sutton had moved into Jackman's New York penthouse, which he purchased with her for USD$21.12 million (AUD $30 million) in 2022.
And the 69-year-old has wasted no time putting her thoughts into words, according to RadarOnline.com on Monday.
The publication reported Furness could release her diary as a memoir to publicly reveal how Jackman and Foster's relationship ultimately ended her union with the Australian A-lister.
"Deb's been desperate to have her side of the story out there," an insider told the publication.
"She's been writing down all her thoughts, the good and the bad, and logging every detail of this roller coaster divorce.
"As soon as her lawyers allow it, she will be talking to publishers about a deal."
Furness finally filed for divorce from Jackman in New York City nearly two years after their separation, according to DailyMail.com last Wednesday.
The Jindabyne actress then took a very surprising public swipe at the Deadpool & Wolverine star in a candid statement to the same publication.
Although she didn't name Jackman, the actress suggested she went through a "traumatic journey of betrayal" amid their high-profile divorce.
"It's a profound wound that cuts deep, however I believe in a higher power and that God/the universe, whatever you relate to as your guidance, is always working FOR us," she said.
"This belief has helped me navigate the breakdown of an almost three-decade marriage. I have gained much knowledge and wisdom through this experience. Even when we are presented with apparent adversity, it is leading us to our greatest good, our true purpose.
"It can hurt, but in the long run, returning to yourself and living within your own integrity, values and boundaries is liberation and freedom."
Jackman has yet to respond directly to the statement himself.
However, an insider said he was "extremely disappointed" his ex-wife had broken their "understanding" not to vilify one another publicly.
"Hugh was extremely disappointed after reading what his ex had said," the source told the Daily Mail on Thursday.
"There was no stipulation that she could not address this but there was an unwritten understanding that she would not trash him to the press.
"She got around this by not naming him - instead focusing on how she felt."
Jackman and Foster have been acquainted for about 23 years, but their relationship is understood to have blossomed from a friendship to a romance when they starred as the leads of The Music Man from February 2022 to January 2023.
An insider at the Broadway production said the co-stars did not shy away from showing affection for each other backstage throughout the run.
"At intermission, Sutton and Hugh would stand and hug for a minute, two minutes in front of the entire cast coming up the stairs," the source told Daily Mail.com in January.
Foster split from her husband of ten years, Ted Griffin, last October and went public with her relationship with Jackman the following January.
The couple were spotted holding hands in Santa Monica, California.
That same month, photos surfaced of the lovebirds making out in an In-N-Out drive-thru in San Fernando, California.
In February, a source close to the Oscar-nominated star told Closer Jackman 'wants to make Sutton his wife'.
The source said the timing of Jackman's official divorce from Furness will impact when he can get married again, but that 'as soon as they are both free and clear, they (Jackman and Foster) want to walk down the aisle'.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Will Ferrell confirms he will return to Broadway with stage musical adaptation of his 2020 Eurovision movie
Will Ferrell confirms he will return to Broadway with stage musical adaptation of his 2020 Eurovision movie

Perth Now

time2 hours ago

  • Perth Now

Will Ferrell confirms he will return to Broadway with stage musical adaptation of his 2020 Eurovision movie

Will Ferrell has confirmed he will return to Broadway with a stage musical adaptation of his 2020 film 'Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga'. The 56-year-old actor and comedian, best known for his roles in 'Elf' and 'Anchorman', is co-writing the Broadway script for the musical with Harper Steele and Anthony King. Will was quoted in Variety saying: 'We are more than excited to bring Eurovision to Broadway. The stage musical is a perfect place to continue our celebration of all the things we love about this amazing and unifying song competition.' The original film starred Will and Rachel McAdams as aspiring Icelandic musicians Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, who dream of representing their country at the Eurovision Song Contest. It featured original songs such as 'Ja Ja Ding Dong', 'Lion of Love', and the Oscar-nominated ballad 'Husavik'. The new stage version is being developed with music by Savan Kotecha, and will be directed by 45-year-old Alex Timbers, whose previous Broadway credits include 'Moulin Rouge! The Musical', 'Beetlejuice', 'Here Lies Love' and 'Gutenberg! The Musical!'. Alex said: 'Will Ferrell and Harper Steele are my comedy heroes. And when I first saw their joyful movie 'Eurovision' during the pandemic, it buoyed spirits during a very dark time. With this stage adaptation, I can't wait to bring that same mix of heart, spectacle, irreverence and awe to audiences across the world.' No cast or production dates have yet been confirmed by producers. Will previously made his Broadway debut in 2009 with the one-man show 'You're Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush'. He also co-wrote 'Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga' alongside Andrew Steele. The new project has the backing of the real Eurovision Song Contest. Martin Green, managing director of the event, said: 'This is a stellar team for what I am sure will be an equally stellar adaption of a film the world loved. Our aim always is to bring the joy of the Eurovision Song Contest to more people globally.'

How a Lord of the Rings star ended up stranded in Tasmania
How a Lord of the Rings star ended up stranded in Tasmania

Sydney Morning Herald

time3 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

How a Lord of the Rings star ended up stranded in Tasmania

When Charlie Vickers steps onto the set of the multimillion-dollar The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as the evil Sauron, it's usually after he has spent several hours in hair and make-up, where a long blond wig and a pair of pointy ears are attached and he's been kitted out in a black suit of armour. He then stands in front of a green screen, conjuring up Middle-earth or whatever fantasy element is part of that day's story (orcs, elves etc), and utters lines such as, 'Whether or not his repentance in the Second Age was genuine, he chose to do evil again.' For The Survivors, the six-part Tasmanian murder mystery adapted from Jane Harper's 2020 novel of the same name, it was an altogether different (and much less expensive) story. Think boardies, thongs and a baby mullet. 'I can just rock up to work,' admits a cheery Vickers over Zoom from his home in London. 'I can just drive my own car to the set, get out and walk into the make-up truck. Whereas on Lord of the Rings, you're having to scan a pass, and then someone else scans another pass, and it's a very different experience.' Loading Despite being Melbourne born and bred, The Survivors is only the 32-year-old's third production in Australia, after the film Palm Beach and the TV series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. Unlike many Australian actors of his age, he didn't follow the usual path of Neighbours or Home and Away. Instead, he was accepted into London's prestigious Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, which meant he bypassed the local scene and landed, almost instantly, in the big time. 'I watched Neighbours religiously with my mum every night,' he says. 'Like, 6.30 it was The Simpsons on Channel 10 and then Neighbours. That's why I want to work more and more in Australia because you just inherently feel the connection to Australian stories, and because there's so much familiarity in these stories. 'There was a joy coming up in England, but actually, I genuinely wouldn't change that. The fact that I could go and watch Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the West End on a Wednesday night, that kind of thing you only get in London. But I certainly missed how quintessentially Australian a lot of Australian projects are.' He made it his mission to seek out Australian projects that he could film between seasons of The Lord of the Rings, and it was while he was on holiday that The Survivors came knocking. Loading 'I was coming back to Melbourne with my wife and my then, maybe, eight-month-old baby,' he says. 'And I got this meeting for a character returning to his coastal hometown with his four-month-old and his wife. And I was like, 'Well, I can't not throw my hat in the ring for this. This is eerily similar.'' The baby thing, by the way, is why he is so at ease as a young dad in The Survivors. 'Yes,' he says, laughing. 'Lots of bouncing.' Written and executive produced by Tony Ayres, The Survivors follows Kieran Elliot (Vickers), who returns with his partner and child to his small coastal Tasmanian hometown of Evelyn Bay, 15 years after two young men drowned, and a teenage girl disappeared on the same day. Kieran's relationship with his parents – and the community – is still fractured, so when a woman's body washes up on the beach, old wounds reopen in a town that is not quite ready to forgive or forget. 'He's a man who has lived with, and is always living with, the grief of his past,' says Vickers of his character. 'He's been through a really traumatic event at a seminal moment of his life, and he has forever lived with the repercussions of it. Not run away from it, but tried to start afresh. And he is then thrust back into a lot of the trauma of his past, and has to deal with a lot of unresolved emotion and a lot of unresolved pain.' For Ayres, a prolific film and TV writer, director and producer, with credits such as The Slap, Stateless and Nowhere Boys to his name, he knew Vickers had the role as soon as he walked into the audition. 'The director Cherie Nowlan and I were doing auditions in Melbourne, and as soon as Charlie walked into the room, we just looked at each other and we knew,' says Ayres. 'We both knew at exactly the same time. '[The character] Kieran is not an alpha male. He's actually a good, decent person. And Charlie is such a good, decent human being – I mean, he's a wonderful actor as well – but there was something so essentially Charlie in Kieran and Kieran in Charlie, that it just became like, 'Oh, well, it's a no-brainer. Clearly this is the guy who was meant to play this role.' Charlie is a very fine, nuanced, detailed actor and he has genuine emotional range.' Although Kieran sits at the centre of the story, Ayers was also drawn to the women in Harper's book. 'There's a monologue that Bronte's mother gives in the book, and it is so powerful and sensational and speaks to an anger that mothers feel at these unconscionable losses,' says Ayers. 'And it reminded me of Women of Troy, something at the scale of Greek tragedy.' Loading Ayers was also mindful to not create another murder mystery where women are overwhelmingly both the victim and the source of entertainment. 'If you're going to do it, then you have to do it in a way which respects the woman who died,' he says. 'The last thing we wanted to do was make a piece that was about a dead woman as entertainment. Certainly, that wasn't Jane's intention in the book, and certainly that wasn't our intention in making the TV series. 'We wanted to be part of a bigger conversation, which I think we need to have as a society about gendered roles and the limitations and constrictions of what it might mean to be a man or a woman and how we might look at ways of broadening that so we don't push people to the most extreme and violent situations.' What also makes The Survivors stand out is that while it features a well-known older cast – Robyn Malcolm, Damien Garvey, Catherine McClements, Martin Sacks and Don Hany – most of the younger cast are relatively unknown or, like Vickers, have worked overseas more than they have in Australia. Yerin Ha, for example, who plays Kieran's partner Mia, has been cast as one of the leads in the next season of Bridgerton, but her local work is limited. 'We had early 30s and late 50s as the two key demographics,' says Ayres. 'So when you're casting those demographics … the famous names that we have in Australia tend to be in their early 50s. And that's the most recognisable talent pool, and we don't have as many names who are younger at the moment.' Loading Ayres thinks the reason many younger local actors are struggling to find recognition is the lack of feature films being made in Australia and then, conversely, the sheer amount of TV being made in general. 'The world that we live in is so noisy, there's so many shows,' says Ayres. 'It's harder for a show to break out. And unless a show breaks out, the actors don't become stars. Interestingly, I think we're seeing more stars coming from TV now – happily, Murray Bartlett came out of season one of The White Lotus – but there are relatively few breakout TV shows.'

This star-studded tale takes us into the heart of acting and obsession
This star-studded tale takes us into the heart of acting and obsession

Sydney Morning Herald

time3 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

This star-studded tale takes us into the heart of acting and obsession

THE GREAT LILLIAN HALL ★★★★ (M) 108 minutes Maybe it's all the time she spent starring in American Horror Story, but Jessica Lange has become more febrile and actressy as she's grown older, making her perfect for the role of Lillian Hall. Directed by a Broadway veteran, the playwright Michael Cristofer, The Great Lillian Hall is a tribute to the New York stage and one of its most revered performers, Marian Seldes, famous both for her talent and the fact that she rarely missed a performance, no matter the length of a play's season. The script is by her niece, Elisabeth Seldes Annacone, and the action takes place during rehearsals of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard just as Lillian, who shares Seldes' work ethic, is starting to lose her grip. The first sign comes when she causes one of her co-stars to trip over the furniture and her troubles accelerate rapidly when the lines begin slipping from her memory. Lange frequently overacts but that is the nature of the part. In her head, Lillian is never offstage. The doorman in the lobby of her apartment building on Central Park South is treated to a line from Chekhov as she leaves for the theatre, and a passing fan on the street gets the same treatment. The only people who can get past the pose are her neighbour, Ty Maynard (Pierce Brosnan), an artist who shares her late-night confidences when they chat to one another from their adjoining balconies, and Edith (Kathy Bates), her salty-tongued housekeeper and assistant. Edith occasionally succeeds in putting her in touch with life's realities but Lillian's daughter, Margaret (Lily Rabe) lacks that gift. In an early scene, Margaret arrives for a scheduled breakfast with her mother only to find that Lillian has forgotten and is about to hurry off to rehearsal, and we gather from her response that this is the kind of disappointment she's been dealing with for most of her life. Films focusing on famous people during their darkest hours seem to be in vogue. We've recently seen Angelina Jolie in Maria, which takes Maria Callas through the last unhappy weeks of her life. Now we're with Lillian as she receives her dementia diagnosis. The difference is that she's refusing to give up. She will act in The Cherry Orchard even if she has to die in the attempt. And in this context, dying doesn't mean merciful oblivion. It means total humiliation.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store