Ever since actor Dean McDermott posted (and quickly deleted) on Instagram that Tori Spelling and him had “decided to go our separate ways and start a new journey” last month, many of us have been asking “What the actual f—k is going on?” Including Spelling herself, with the former 90210 actress pictured wearing a bright yellow canary jumper with that phrase scrawled across just back days after.
Although multiple sources have been either confirming or denying the rumours (“[They] are not getting a divorce”, one insider told US Weekly. “Nothing he does or has done will ever be good enough for her,” said another to The Daily Weekend), over the weekend Spelling added fuel to the allegations. The 50-year-old reality TV star was seen leaving an $100-a-night motel with her five children that she shares with McDermott – 16-year-old Liam, 15-year-old Stella, 11-year-old Hattie, ten-year-old Finn, and six-year-old Beau (a far cry from the $165 million home she grew up in that was owned by her television mogul father Aaron Spelling).
A quick refresher. The pair first met in the mid-00s, on the set of their 2005 Lifetime movie, Mind Over Murder, in Canada. At the time they both had partners – Spelling had been married for a year to her first husband, Charlie Shanian, while McDermott had been married to Jo Eustace for over a decade. “It was love at first sight. I fell so hard … Then I noticed he had a wedding ring,” Spelling wrote in her 2009 memoir, sTORI Telling, about meeting McDermott. “When someone asked, he pulled out photos of his children. And — oh, yeah — I had a husband too.”
In the book she then went on to describe one night where they went to a bar after dinner and ended up spending the night at the Cartier Place. “The following day when I woke up next to Dean, I had no regrets.”
In 2006, they eloped in Fiji just a month after settling their respective divorces and welcomed their first child by March 2007. It was around this time that the couple became reality TV stars thanks to their debut show Tori and Dean: Inn Love, which followed them as they renovated a bed & breakfast titled Chateau La Rue for two seasons.
The first sign of turmoil, however, arose in 2013 when Spelling had to dispute rumours that the two were facing marital troubles. ‘It’s just sad that our actual happiness would probably be deemed boring," she said at the time. However a year later, Us Weekly reported news of McDermott’s affair with a woman named Emily Goodhand, while Spelling was at home with their four children celebrating the holidays.
“I feel shame. I’ve never felt shame before," he said of his transgressions during their new reality show, True Tori, that spent a season unpacking the infidelity drama. "You were at a Christmas event, and I was f------ around. That’s disgusting. That’s disgusting."
Although they promised to work through their marital woes, drama has continued to follow the tumultuous pair recently. In 2021 Spelling confirmed they no longer slept in the same bed during an appearance on SiriusXM’s Jeff Lewis Live. “Right now my kids and dogs sleep in my bed," she said. Then that year McDermott was absent from the family holiday card.
Of course, as one insider source has said: “‘For a very long time Tori used their marital problems to stay relevant. Everyone knew about their issues, and she didn’t play it down, she played it – even going so far to go outside where she knew paparazzi were waiting holding papers that were a clear indication of a divorce.” So, whether this is another highly publicised fight, or the beginning of the end for their 18-year relationship is yet to be fully confirmed. Watch this space.
