With Succession hitting a peak this week with a staggering plot-twist early in its final season (no spoilers here, but it was BIG), all eyes are back on the Murdoch family — the noted inspirations for the Roys in screen — as viewers consider how the King Lear-esque conceding of the crown might actually play out in real life. After all, Rupert Murdoch, at 92, has yet to choose a successor to his media empire, which includes Fox News, The Sun, The Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.
Then, suddenly, Vanity Fair came through with the essential intel we all craved: a 6,000 word strong update on the Murdoch succession race, literally titled “Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama”, which included mountains of juicy details on Murdoch’s recent divorce from Jerry Hall, his whirlwind engagement (and disengagement) and some very real parallels to our favourite HBO show.
Thanks to Vanity Fair, we know all about Murdoch’s current health (spoiler: it’s not good), how he ended his marriage over email, and who is the Connor Roy of the Murdoch clan. Here’s all the biggest revelations.
He ended his marriage to Jerry Hall over email
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall first met in 2013 in Melbourne, where she was playing Mrs Robinson in a stage version of The Graduate, after being introduced by Murdoch’s niece Penny Fowler, who was friends with Hall. Murdoch fell head over heels for her, filling her hotel room with flowers and chocolates, and she returned his affections. Hall’s friend Tom Cashin told Vanity Fair: “They seemed to our surprise very happy and a wonderful fit.” Within weeks, the two had flown to Texas to meet Hall’s “Fox News-loving” family, and within six months the pair were engaged. Rupert apparently told Jerry upon their engagement: “Mick was so unfaithful to you. I’d never be unfaithful.”
Then, six years later, he called it quits, leaving Hall “blindsided” by his change of heart. Not least because Murdoch decided to do it over email (savage). While waiting for Murdoch to join her at their Oxfordshire estate last June, Hall recieved a rather curt email. The email, which was screenshoted and seen by Vanity Fair, said: “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage [...] We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do… My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.”
To add salt to the wound, Hall allegedly told her friends that she was given 30 days to vacate Murdoch’s Bel Air mansion in California. She was watched by security guards while she packed and asked to show receipts to prove items were hers.
And insisted she was under no circumstances allowed to speak to Jesse Armstrong
According to the Vanity Fair article, one of the conditions of Murdoch and Hall’s divorce settlement was that she was strictly forbidden from feeding any potential story ideas to Succession writers.
Jesse Armstrong, Succession’s creator and lead writer, has previously opened up about Murdoch being an inspiration for Succession, but insists he is not the only person to be used as source material. “They’re fictional creations who’ve come out of a ton of reading and research,” Armstrong told Radio Times in 2020. “I’d written a screenplay about Rupert Murdoch’s family and it never got made. And it got me interested in the similarities between all these guys — Murdoch, Robert Maxwell and Conrad Black — who are passing from their position of predominance as tech takes over. But, also, how cable news and newspapers are still shaping our political climate.”
Mick Jagger had to disconnect Murdoch’s spycams for Jerry Hall
Following her and Murdoch’s split, Jerry Hall returned to the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, only to discovered the surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters, it has been reported. She enlisted her ex-husband, Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger, to help her stop the feed, so Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them.
Hall burned an effigy of Murdoch after their divorce
She’s not the first person to turn to pyrotechnics after a bad breakup and she won’t be the last. In the Vanity Fair piece, it is revealed that Jerry Hall apparently burned a small effigy of Rupert Murdoch after he was revealed to be dating someone new. “She was devastated, mad, and humiliated,” Hall’s close friend Tom Cashin told Vanity Fair. So, on the first day of lent in February, Hall decided to give up Murdoch. According to Vanity Fair, she told friends how she made an effigy of Murdoch, tied dental floss around its neck, and burned it on her grill.
Murdoch and Hall had dinner with his new girlfriend before they got together
Shortly after his divorce from Jerry Hall was finalised, Murdoch began a relationship with former American radio host and widow of a country music star, Ann Lesley Smith. Smith and Murdoch met on his ranch in California back when she was dating the ranch manager. Murdoch and Hall were still together, so the couples met up for a dinner. At the dinner, Smith told Murdoch that he and Fox News were “saving democracy” and also offered to give Murdoch a teeth cleaning (Smith previously worked as a self-employed dental hygienist after graduating from college). Ladies, if a random dinner guest offers your husband a teeth cleaning: watch out.
He proposed, but called it off two weeks later because she was too Christian
Murdoch attempted to seal the deal with Smith in March, offering her an 11-carat diamond engagement ring estimated to be worth upwards of £2 million (oof!). Then, two weeks later, the pair went back on their engagement. Why? God’s plan. No, really, one source close to Murdoch told Vanity Fair that he had become “increasingly uncomfortable” with Smith’s strong evangelical views. “She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope,” the source told the magazine. (A spokesperson for Murdoch declined to respond to this allegation in Vanity Fair and Smith did not respond to requests for comment from Vanity Fair on social media.)
Rupert Murdoch is not a healthy man
According to the Vanity Fair article, the 92-year-old media tycoon has had multiple periods of ill health over the past few years, including an incident where he broke his back, was relegated to a wheelchair, and a recent episode where he had to be propped up by his son at a wedding because he was so weak he struggled to stand unassisted.
Vanity Fair claim that Murdoch has suffered a broken back, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon over the past few years alone. During the incident when he broke his back on a yacht, Rupert faced the Succession-esque restrictions of being gravely ill when not landborne - they had to steer to the nearest hospital and dock there, only to realise the hospital was closed following a fire, then wait for a private jet to take Rupert to another hospital. “He kept almost dying,” a person close to the family told Vanity Fair.
Murdoch was also very careful during the pandemic, and feared greatly for his health. He and Hall quarantined together in his home in Bel Air for months, and Hall made sourdough bread and cooked roast chicken. Cashin also told Vanity Fair that during Murdoch’s periods of ill health, “Jerry was as sensitive with him as a full-time nurse would have been.”
Murdoch pits his kids against eachother like Logan Roy
It’s not hugely surprising given how much backstabbing, greasy pole climbing and Cain and Abel-ing we’ve seen in Succession, but Murdoch apparently pits his children against each other to fuel healthy (or actually quite unhealthy/trauma inducing) competition, in an effort to weed out the weak via survival of the fittest. The main subjects are Elisabeth, 54, Lachlan, 51, and James, 50, the children he shares with Anna Maria Torv, who he has allegedly always viewed as his most suitable successors. “He pitted his kids against each other their entire lives. It’s sad,” a person close to the family told Vanity Fair.
Prudence isn’t involved, she’s more of a Connor Roy
Of course, Murdoch actually has six children in total, but the others aren’t considered quite as close to the throne. The only other child who has voting rights on Murdoch’s board is his eldest, Prudence, though a former NewsCorp executive told Vanity Fair she is a complete “wild card.” Older, distanced from the main three children, considered a bit weird and unpredictable - all sounds quite Connor Roy, doesn’t it?
Rupert Murdoch has watched Hamilton
With Jerry Hall on one of their early dates! Not that much of a revelation but just feels quite weird, doesn’t it?
