Heartbreakingly fast.
For all the speculation that the reported split has come about because the couple haven’t spent enough time together or because they “lack intimacy” or because Nicole has taken on too many raunchy parts of late, the fact is they were outwardly fine until very recently.
In July friends of mine saw the Kidman/Urban clan holidaying on the Greek island of Paxos. The couple and their daughters, as well as Nicole’s sister Antonia and her husband and children, enjoyed a happy and laughter-filled break on the luxury island where they were regularly seen in local restaurants.
“They had a big table and the two couples and all their kids seemed to be having a fantastic time,” my holidaying friend told me. “After dinner they’d all head off down the street chatting and laughing. There was no sign anything was amiss with Keith and Nicole.”
In fact, Nicole’s niece, Lucia Hawley, posted some pictures of herself with her mum and aunt on the holiday with the cheerful caption: “Griswalds on tour.”
Like Hugh Jackman and Deborra-lee Furness in 2023, reports of Kidman and Urban’s split after 19 years of marriage has come with no warning. If the marriage has been in crisis for some time – as some have suggested – would the couple have gone on a jolly family vacation where tensions might’ve been observed? Surely if they were having troubles the pair would have withdrawn?
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Kidman is said to have been “blindsided” by the split and that it’s been initiated by Urban but in the modern celebrity world where perception is everything, that may be PR spin.
So what has happened since June 26 when Kidman posted a loving shot of the couple to mark their wedding anniversary with the caption “Happy Anniversary Baby” and today’s bombshell news that the pair are living apart?
There was a clue six weeks ago that all might not be well when Kidman shared an Instagram post with the caption: “Summer memories. Now back to school.”
There were pictures of her swimming, several with her and daughters Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14, and some from the Greek holiday with extended family. Oddly, not one of the 17 pictures included Keith.
Likewise, the couple were said to be distant and tense at their last public sighting at the FIFA Club World Cup match in Nashville just a few days before their wedding anniversary in June. Body-language analyst Louise Mahler noted that Kidman was fiddling with her left hand and there was a lack of eye contact with Urban.
“He is looking away, but Nicole is looking at him; it is an odd look,” she said.
For a couple who’ve always been demonstrably affectionate, notably on the red carpet, the cooler interaction is a sign that not all was well. Retrospectively, it may also be the reason why the normally jovial Urban abruptly ended a radio interview on July 1 when he was asked how he felt about his wife’s raunchy sex scenes in A Family Affair and Baby Girl.
“What does Keith Urban think when he sees his beautiful wife with beautiful younger men like Zac Efron, having these beautiful love scenes,” host Max Burford asked the singer.
Urban didn’t answer and disconnected the Zoom call. It was an odd response – those who’ve been in the spotlight as long as this couple should be ready for such an enquiry and laugh it off. That Urban was so reactive speaks volumes about what may have been happening behind the scenes in his marriage.
What is clear is that the pair have spent a lot of time apart recently with Urban touring with his High and Alive tour and Kidman filming Practical Magic 2 in London.
Naturally, speculation is rife that the singer may have fallen off the wagon since we know he has struggled with alcohol and drugs and was back in rehab within four months of marrying in June 2006. Kidman has spoken before about that time and more recently made the point that, despite appearances, all marriages face challenges.
“There’s no perfect anything,” she said while promoting her Netflix series The Perfect Couple last year. “Anything that’s presented as perfect … forget it.”
The actress has also been dealing with the grief over the loss of her mother, Janelle, who died suddenly last September. While couples tend to lean on each other at such times, death can also prompt a re-evaluation of the life we have left. Certainly, Kidman’s creative choices of late have suggested a desire to explore new themes.
Like Jackman and Furness before them, the reason we’re so stunned by the Kidman/Urban split is that we believed in them. We believed that “our Nic” had found happiness with a nice Aussie boy after her disastrous marriage to Tom Cruise, her break away from scientology and her estrangement from the adopted children the couple shared. We wanted Urban with his love songs and his adoring gaze to be the real deal and for the couple’s cute Covid singalongs and their hard-won offspring to be the fairytale come true.
As Urban sings in his 2010 hit Without You: “The travelling, the singing, it don’t mean nothing without you.”
But people change. And fairytales are just that.
