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Tori Spelling told her estranged husband, Dean McDermott, that she was divorcing him while she was busy recording her new podcast.
The reality TV star phoned Dean (57) while she was recording misSpelling and left him a voicemail.
"Hey, it’s T. I know you’re working. Can you call me? It’s important," she could be heard saying. "Everything’s fine. The kids are fine, but call me please. Bye."
After ending the call Tori (50) told listeners that she'd “just filed for divorce” after 18 years of marriage.
“I just got word from my lawyer that it’s public,” she added.
Tori and Dean's separation was announced in June last year by Dean in a since-deleted Instagram post.
The estranged couple have five children together, Liam (17), Stella (15), Hattie (12), Finn (11) and Beau (7).
Dean also has a son, Jack (25), with his ex wife Mary Jo Eustace.
Dean called Tori back about 10 minutes later while she was still busy recording her podcast, and listeners got to hear her side of their conversation.
“I hate to do this to you while you’re in the middle of you’re going to work and everything. They’ve done it,” she told him, referring to the divorce filing.
“It’s just the formality. It’s like a one sheet you check off and next you’ll have to sign it. You have a lawyer? Wait, it’s going to be spun what way, that I had enough of you? What do you mean?”
She added, “If it’s about that, ‘who files first, the other person’s wrong,’ I feel like I deserve to file first then. Well, I mean you basically put it all out there with Daily Mail, like you said, everything that you’ve done to me over the years. So, I think it would make perfect sense that it’s followed up that I would file. Those are things I would never have divulged to anybody, and you did.”
Tori was talking about Dean's bombshell interview with the Daily Mail in November last year, in which he admitted to inflicting “a lot of pain” in their marriage.
Tori said there were a number of things that led to their split.
When they first got together they were both married to other people - Tori to actor and writer Charlie Shanian and Dean to singer and actress Mary Jo.
“We had this very quick, passionate falling-in-love period,” she said, adding that she liked that she could be herself around him.
“It wasn’t like, the cute like, giggly, ‘this is what people want me to be’. I was able to be like, loud ... I could have a foul mouth. I’m not just Donna Martin, the perfect good girl [her character from Beverly Hills, 90210]. I could have some bad girl in me and it was okay.”
Things changed after they had children and Tori admits prioritising her children over her marriage.
“We always said, ‘We won’t be those parents that change. We’ll make sure we make our relationship a priority, the two of us. We have date nights’. And everything went out the window. I became completely focused on the kids and kind of left him, in a way.”
READ MORE | Behind Tori Spelling’s fall from riches: from daddy’s princess to motorhome mama
Tori said she ignored Dean’s anger issues and decided to create a false persona for him, portraying him as Prince Charming when she was in public and on TV, while in real life, things were falling apart.
“We did our reality show and the first one was like, ‘Fun, fun’. So any bad stuff that would happen or fights or anything, they would edit. Women everywhere, I would hear, ‘I wish I had a Dean’. And I was like, ‘If you only knew…’ ”
Dean has been dating Lily Calo, who works at a wellness company and Tori is rumoured to be in a relationship with advertising exec Ryan Cramer.
On her podcast, Tori said for 15 years she wanted a divorce but chose to protect Dean.
“We always say, ‘Hey, we made it 18 years'. It shouldn’t have made it 18 years. And I think he would say the same thing if he and I had a real heart-to-heart. It should have been over a lot sooner.”
SOURCES: PAGESIX.COM, USMAGAZINE.COM, PEOPLE.COM
