Most showbiz splits don’t surprise. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, though?
That’s one we didn’t see coming.
Are they odd? Yes — but in a way that seemed well-matched.
They share a complexity that clashes with their otherwise outwardly sunny dispositions, fastidious personal presentations and what always seemed the biggest tell that their marriage wasn’t solid: Over-the-top nuzzling, hanging off of each other, making out and all but dry humping on red carpets, at movie premieres and awards shows.
Secure couples who are in love and enjoy a healthy sex life don’t feel the need to prove it — let alone ALL. THE. TIME.
So, what is it they were trying to convince the public of, exactly?
Most showbiz splits don’t surprise. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, though? That’s one we didn’t see coming
As it was, Kidman, 58, and Urban, 57, had plenty in common. Both are Australian transplants to the US who knew, from early ages, that they wanted to be performers.
Neither one finished high school. Kidman once revealed in a radio interview that she dropped out at age 16, while Urban left at 15.
‘We shouldn’t be putting that out there,’ her husband interjected, with a laugh. ‘It’s not a good promotion.’
But that was hardly Urban’s biggest secret.
Remember this as one narrative begins to take hold amid this divorce, which Kidman officially filed for on Tuesday: The problem, go the rumblings, was Nicole and her constant desire to work.
‘Keith never sees Nicole,’ one source said.
Note the order — it’s not that Nicole never sees Keith, even though both have demanding careers.
Even though Urban is a touring musician. Kidman, at least, is locked into any given location for weeks or months on end.
But we are meant to believe that it’s her ambition, her careerism, that broke this marriage.
If anything’s believable, it’s that what seems like an ongoing midlife crisis has led Kidman to take every role requiring explicit on-screen sex with younger men to prove her sexual viability.
Subtle, she is not.
In promoting one such film, 2024’s BDSM-themed Babygirl, Kidman said this in an interview:
‘There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to orgasm anymore.’ I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life. I’m over it. It was so present all the time for me that it was almost like a burnout.’
Urban, who has been on tour since May, appears to be working this angle too.
‘The intimacy isn’t there,’ that source told the Daily Mail. ‘They are just going through the motions [of being married]. Keith had to call her out that he isn’t happy’.
That was Monday.
On Tuesday, longstanding rumors in Australian media — that Urban has been seeing another, much-younger woman for quite some time now — were apparently confirmed.
And by Team Kidman, no less. She may be odd, but she’s no dummy. She surely sees that Urban’s trying to depict her as the villain here.
‘All the signs point to the fact Keith is with another woman,’ a Kidman source told TMZ.
‘Let’s just say, Nicole doesn’t dispute that. But she’s still shocked over it.’
Is she, really? Because Urban was slippery from the outset, before they began dating.
If anything’s believable, it’s that what seems like an ongoing midlife crisis has led Kidman to take every role requiring explicit on-screen sex with younger men to prove her sexual viability
‘I remember thinking, I had such a crush on him, and he wasn’t interested in me,’ Kidman said in 2017. ‘He didn’t call me for four months.’
‘I thought she was way out of my league,’ Urban said the following year. ‘Not in a million years did I think that somebody like that would be interested in me. At all.’
They were engaged within months of dating and married in June 2006. Kidman cemented her commitment just four months later when Urban, a former crack cocaine and booze addict, relapsed on alcohol and entered rehab in Palm Springs.
Two months later, on Christmas Eve, the Daily Mail published an exclusive interview with part-time model and Nashville resident Amanda Wyatt, who claimed she and Urban had been involved throughout his relationship with and engagement to Kidman.
Urban denied the allegations at the time.
‘I feel sorry for Nicole,’ Wyatt said. ‘Keith cheated on her repeatedly with me, right up to just before they got married.’
Wyatt said she was 21 when they met in 2004. Urban was 16 years older.
Perhaps Wyatt was one reason Urban took four months to call Kidman after they first met.
‘He told me he loved me,’ Wyatt said, adding that Urban was known to still be drinking and using drugs.
‘As I got to know him, it was clear he was a deeply troubled man,’ she said. ‘He drank constantly. His favorite was Crown Royal Reserve whisky. And he did drugs: Ecstasy, cocaine, pot — you name it… I rarely saw him sober.’
Wyatt said that after she saw photos of Urban and Kidman together, she asked about it, but he wouldn’t say a thing. They continued having unprotected sex, she claimed.
‘He told me he longed for a child,’ Wyatt said. ‘I sometimes wonder if he said the same thing to Nicole.’
Kidman was no stranger to difficult divorce, having infamously been dumped by Tom Cruise just after their 10-year wedding anniversary.
So why would she stay in an already brief marriage founded on apparent lies of sobriety, fidelity and honesty?
Perhaps she wanted this one to work. Perhaps she didn’t want to be twice divorced. Maybe she thought, as so many women do, that she could ‘fix’ him.
Of course, that never works.
For the sake of their two teenage daughters, the best Kidman can hope for is a relatively clean split — but who are we kidding? Both sides already appear to be slinging mud.
As Urban’s alleged one-time affair partner said all those years ago: ‘I hope their marriage works — but leopards don’t change their spots.’
