Every Truly Wild Detail From Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott’s Divorce

The most surprising thing about Tori Spelling filing for divorce from her husband of 18 years, Dean McDermott, is that it took this long to happen. The couple has been plagued by McDermott’s admitted infidelity and Spelling’s financial mishaps pretty much since they got married in Fiji in 2006 after meeting the year before on the set of the TV movie Mind Over Murder — while both married to other people. Now, it’s all over: Spelling filed for divorce on March 29, citing the classic “irreconcilable differences” and requesting sole physical custody of the couple’s five children as well as spousal support. Spelling has been characteristically chatty about the problems in her marriage, even going so far as to reveal that she threw a loaded baked potato at McDermott during one of the couple’s last fights.

Spelling’s occasionally estranged mother Candy Spelling told People this week that “everything’s good” now that Spelling and McDermott have separated. But is it? Let’s review.

Cheating on Chopped Canada 

Divorce rumors started for the couple a full ten years ago, when McDermott publicly admitted to cheating on Spelling with a woman he met at a Toronto hotel while filming — heaven help us — Chopped Canada. The woman went public with the affair story in Us Weekly, McDermott checked into rehab for sex addiction, and Spelling filmed the aftermath for her Lifetime reality show True Tori (the gal loves a pun).

Despite all this drama, Spelling and McDermott reconciled. McDermott reportedly celebrated by getting his wife’s name tattooed directly above his private parts. (He already had “Truly, Madly, Deeply, Tori” tattooed on his wrist when they got married.)

Sleeping in Separate Beds

Somehow, Spelling and McDermott made it through his cheating scandal and went on to have a fifth child together in 2017. But by 2021, Spelling started to hint, loudly, that she was planning to divorce McDermott. First, she appeared on Jeff Lewis’s Sirius XM radio show and revealed that she and McDermott no longer slept in the same bed. Then, she made a big show for the paparazzi outside an attorney’s office carrying a legal pad that had “assets,” “support,” and “custody” written in big letters on it. Finally, she dressed up like a “dead bride” for Halloween.

“Dean has been caught in so many lies and infidelities over the years and Tori is just over it,” a source told Entertainment Tonight at the time. “Dean does not want to get divorced because of financial reasons, and Tori doesn’t want to for the sake of their family.”

And so, despite all of Spelling’s hints, the couple still did not get divorced. Spelling did send out a family Christmas card in 2021 without McDermott, though:

Dean’s Divorce Announcement

Spelling and McDermott stayed mostly quiet during 2022, but by summer 2023, things were apparently on the rocks once more. McDermott announced they were getting divorced in a now-deleted Instagram post in June 2023. “It’s with great sadness and a very very heavy heart that after 18 years together and 5 amazing children, that @torispelling and I have decided to go our separate ways, and start a new journey of our own,” he wrote in a statement. “We will continue to work together as loving parents and guide and love our children through this difficult time. We ask that you all respect our privacy as we take this time to surround our family with love and work our way through this. Thank you all for your support and kindness. 🙏”

Spelling declined to confirm the news at the time, and neither party actually filed for divorce. But when TMZ asked Spelling about her marriage the following month, she said dramatically, “I’ve always looked better on my own.”

By October, both parties were photographed with other partners: McDermott was spotted holding hands with a woman named Lily Calo outside a social-services office in L.A. (hmmm), and Spelling was papped making out with a man named Ryan Cramer outside a restaurant.

The Baked Potato

Spelling finally officially filed for divorce on March 29, and — in perhaps the first good business decision she has ever made — she timed it to the release of her new podcast, misSPELLING.

The former 90210 actress has started to spill about what led up to the couple’s split: She said there were “red flags” from the very beginning of their relationship (uh-huh) and that “nothing was the same” after they had kids. For his part, McDermott did an interview with the Daily Mail last fall in which he took responsibility for his role in the divorce. “All Tori’s ever done to this day is want me to be happy and healthy and I inflicted a lot of damage and pain on that woman,” he said, adding that he had a significant problem with alcohol during the marriage but is now sober. He also said the couple’s sex life was challenged by Spelling’s insistence on keeping pets — including “pigs and chickens” — in the bedroom.

But Spelling revealed the most important details about the separation on her podcast, including what happened during the fight that led her to file for divorce. According to her, McDermott made a “dig” at her just as she had returned from her local Wendy’s.

“This guttural scream came out of me,” she said. “It wasn’t even like a sexy scream, like running in a horror film. It was beastlike. It wasn’t pretty at all. I would love to have seen what my face looked like. I’m sure it was all contorted. And I was like, ‘Fuck you!’ And I took my most prized possession in that moment, my baked potato. It was loaded to perfection, and I smashed it on the ground.”

“I’ve never seen a baked potato fly like that,” she continued. “Let me just say it was a wall-to-wall potato. It was on the floor. It was on the oven. It was everywhere.”

A gorgeous, fitting image for the end of one of the messiest celebrity relationships in history. We can only hope Spelling shares more as the estranged couple heads into what will undoubtedly be a protracted court battle.