Since the shock news broken earlier this week that celebrity, PDA-loving super couple Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were ending their 19-year marriage, dueling reports have come out, with one saying that the split was driven by the 58-year-old Oscar winner’s “second teenagerhood” and her “bottomless need for sexual attention.”
But other reports suggest that Urban’s the one having a mid-life crisis, noting that the talk in their hometown of Nashville is that the 57-year-old country singer was involved “with another woman” before Kidman filed for divorce Tuesday and that he’s been seen acting flirty with 25-year-old guitarist Maggie Baugh during their performances for his High and Alive World Tour.
There’s also been talk that either Kidman or Urban was inspired to end a relationship that had run its course by after seeing their Australian friends, Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness, go their separate ways, according to the Daily Mail. That ex-couple announced their split in 2023 after nearly three decades of marriage, and Jackman has since moved on with a. new relationship with Sutton Foster.
Whatever went wrong, the Daily Mail noted that there’s “always been gossip about the marriage.”
Kidman and Urban met in 2005, four years after Kidman’s tumultuous split from Tom Cruise — which he reportedly initiated for reasons that have never been made public.
Within months of Urban and Kidman’s 2006 wedding, he had to go into rehab for cocaine and alcohol abuse. It was his third trip to rehab, and he said he’s been sober since. But soon after he emerged from rehab, the couple were hit with accusations from a model that Urban had cheated on Kidman multiple times in the run-up to the wedding.
Some of the more recent gossip has centered on Kidman’s tendency to work a lot and to take on any project that comes her way, even questionable streaming series and films like “The Perfect Couple” and “A Family Affair,” the Daily Mail reported.
Then there was “Babygirl,” the 2024 film in which she played a high-powered executive who engages in a sexually submissive affair with an intern in his 20s, the Daily Mail said. “Babygirl” received mixed reviews, though both she and co-star Harris Dickinson created a lot of buzz with their steamy sex scenes, including one showing Kidman obeying Dickinson’s command to crawl naked to lap milk from a saucer. Kidman also put forward a sex-positive message on the press tour, gushing in one interview that she had experienced “so many orgasms” during filming.
While Kidman was honored at the Venice Film Festival for her performance, she didn’t receive a highly anticipated Oscar nomination.
Sources told the Daily Mail that Kidman’s “Babygirl” sex scenes and her TMI press tour probably didn’t do her marriage any good.
“Did she think about what her teenagers would think, or her husband?” a Nashville source told the Daily Mail referring to Kidman and Urban’s daughters, 17 and 14.
“The word is that she is a very highly sexual person, that’s the reputation, and she has never shied away from expressing that on screen,” the source said.
The Daily Mail also said that some of Kidman’s behavior “has been unexpected.” For example, she was spotted dancing on her own in a singlet at a Charli XCX concert in New York five months ago. “With her hair in a pony tail and dark glasses, she almost passed for a teenager like the rest of the audience,” the Daily Mail also said, leading to speculation that she’s trying to enjoy a “second teenagerhood.”
But TMZ reported Thursday that Urban is the spouse who is looking for ways to recapture his youth or for a sense of renewal,, with sources in the estranged couple’s “inner circle” saying that he’s the one who is in crisis. And, his separation from Kidman is “just the latest in a string of confusing choices.”
In early January, Urban fired his entire band, with whom he had been playing with for 25 years, TMZ reported. A few months earlier, he released his album “High,” which failed to crack the year-end charts in the United States, and it was far from his best-selling album ever, TMZ added.
Urban has spent much of the past year on his High and Alive World Tour — with Baugh, the guitarist. The musician and singer has made headlines the past two days by sharing on Instagram a clip of one of their performances, during which they sang the love song, “The Fighter,” and he slipped her name, Maggie, into the lyrics.
The clip shows Urban singing: “When they’re tryna get to you, Maggie I’ll be your guitar player.”
The original lyric goes: “When they’re tryna get to you, baby I’ll be the fighter.”
Urban once said that he wrote the song as a tribute to Kidman. The song is supposed to be about a couple navigating the early days of a relationship, with a man singing about how he wants to help his new love learn to trust again after her previous partner “hurt” her and may have “scared” her out of love.
“And it’s gonna take just a little time,” the song goes. “But you’re gonna see that I was born to love you.”
Neither Urban nor Baugh have commented on the change in lyrics or on the nature of their relationship, but the clips of their performances have boosted a rumor, floated by a Nashville music industry source, that Urban’s new girlfriend was “a younger woman in the business.”
Meanwhile, Urban may have been away on tour in recent months but he managed to move out of the family home in Nashville in the early summer and set himself up in a “bachelor pad,” according to TMZ and the Daily Mail.
Urban and Kidman were last seen together on June 20 at a FIFA Club World Cup football match Nashville. Five days later she wished him a happy anniversary on Instagram, posting an old black and white picture of them with the words: “Happy Anniversary Baby.” Fans noted that he responded with a heart emoji. But that was it — no loving words in response to his wife and no post of his own.