The last year has been a bumpy one for Rupert Murdoch, what with the $1.6 billion Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, the divorce from supermodel Jerry Hall, and the failed two-week engagement to Ann Lesley Smith. Things could keep spiraling, Gabriel Sherman writes in a Vanity Fair cover story. "After interviewing dozens of people for this story, I was struck by how sad all the Murdochs seem," writes Sherman, who sees a parallel between King Midas and Murdoch, who has built a great fortune but "destroy[ed] virtually anything he touched," his family included, in the process. Sherman's sources help him go deep: into the 92-year-old's largely unreported medical issues; the succession drama involving his eldest children; and, perhaps most juicily, his 2016 marriage to and 2022 divorce from Hall.
Through sources, he shares how Murdoch had her hotel room filled with flowers and chocolates prior to their first date, a lunch in NYC; he reportedly proposed by promising he wouldn't be unfaithful as former partner Mick Jagger had been. Sherman paints Hall as a caring and dutiful wife who spoon-fed Murdoch for months after he broke his back in a 2018 fall on a yacht. But last June, while waiting for Murdoch to arrive at their Oxfordshire estate, she reportedly received an email from Murdoch calling an end to things. "We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do," it reportedly read. Sherman details how Jagger's security people helped her disable cameras that were recording her in the home she got in the divorce, and how she realized Murdoch had started to date Smith, whom they had hosted for dinner the year prior. (Read the full story here, which mentions an effigy of Murdoch that Hall reportedly burned on her grill.)
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