Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
This episode was recorded on Wella Medical Land.
Just a heads up, guys, this episode's got a bit of spicy language in it and has discussions of sexual abuse and drug abuse, so it might not be one for the little ears.
I'm Brittany Hockley and I'm Laura Burn.
Welcome to Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up, the show where we take you inside the spiciest celebrity relationship stories of our time. Now. Movie star Demi Moore was an absolute icon of the nineties. At one point, she was the highest paid actress of all time.
I didn't know this. Can I also say what I didn't know? I always thought it was Demi Moore, not Demi Moore.
So did I, And I think a lot of people around the world stay incorrectly it's Demi how she So we've.
Been putting the wrong m fastest on the wrong salabile.
Yes, that was very good, Laura. So today we're talking about Demi mour and her relationship with our beloved Ashton Kutcher. The reason this is so interesting is there was a fifteen year age gap, which, with dem being older by fifteen years, it.
Was a bit spicy and scandalous at the time. Wasn't it very significant?
And I think probably one of the biggest age gaps that we saw in Holly were definitely one of the earliest ones. I think they were in the forefront of this, like it's okay to have these big age gap, It's okay for the woman to be the older one. Fifteen years was a really, really big time. She was an og cougar. I can say that because I was a cougar myself. I dated a guy seven years younger than me, so like, but she doubled that.
But you also weren't the og one. You were just like a run of the mill old cougar.
No. But I just feel like I can drop the term cougar because I was a cougar.
Oh all right, let's get into the episode.
Well, the reason this is so interesting is we looked at this like it was this beautiful relationship we had this young heart Throb Ashton Kutscher, who married a beautiful Demi Moore, very successful actress. But there were some very very dark times that went on in that relationship that I don't think a lot of people knew about. I definitely didn't know about them. So we are going to get into them. So we're going to kickstart with Demi.
She was born November eleventh, nineteen sixty two, so she's now fifty nine years old, still looks like she was thirty five. She still looks better than USI house, we're half her age, but yes, she looks amazing. But she had quite a tumultuous upbringing. Her father left her then eighteen year old mother before Demi was born, so they only had a two month marriage, so he never even met his daughter.
I didn't realize until we did the deep dive in there, just how fucked up her childhood and upbringing was.
Her childhood was very very dark, so her mother and her stepfather were married and divorced twice, and her stepfather ended up dying by suicide a year after the second divorce, devastating, devastating. Her mother also had a super long history of arrest, drink driving arson like. There were a lot of things going on, so it was obviously a pretty unstable home.
But a real kick in the guts for Demi is that she only found out about her biological father when she was thirteen years old, and this was after inspecting a mother's marriage certificate. She was a bit confused because her mother and her stepfather were married only a year after she was born, so she always thought her stepfather
was her father. She didn't know it was her stepfather. Now, something really, really horrific happened that we're going to state because Demi talks about it in her twenty nineteen memoir. At fifteen years old, she was raped and her rapist claimed that he had paid Demi's mother for access to Demi. So this is absolutely her. This has come from her memoir.
There aren't any words for her. But the two people who are supposed to protect you in life, like your two foundations that give you safety, protection love, have abandoned you. Like that's what that is. You are in the world completely on your own.
Well, she does say in the memoir, she says, look, it is unclear if this is true. All she is saying is that this is what the rapist had claimed that was his claim. She will not know, I guess, and she doesn't know if that is true. But whether it is or not, this doesn't make the situation better. It's absolutely horrific. But at age sixteen, she left home and she left school.
She has experienced so much that she shouldn't have to experience as a sixteen year old.
Child, or no one should ever have to experience.
Absolutely, and then she's left her home. She's left school and managed to still go on to be one of the most successful and biggest movie stars in the world.
Leaving home at sixteen after that childhood and then becoming the highest paid actress, they're well done. So she's moved home and she signed with a modeling agency and started to take acting classes at sixteen. She was super inspired by her next door neighbor who was sort of doing that kind of a thing. She appeared on the cover of a French adult magazine we in nineteen eighty one, but she lied about She alied about her age because she was only sixteen, so you're not allowed to do that.
You still have to have like parental supervision, I guess. So she said she was eighteen, which I think is a common theme back then. I think a lot of people will lying about their age too.
For all the episodes that we've done now, it is certainly a common theme. Like I was a child star. I was pretending like I was twenty when I was really fourteen. I mean, this one seems a.
Little bit standard Hollywood.
Yeah, a little bit more believable. She was only aging herself up by two years.
Usually they're like, I was five, but I told them I was eighteen and they said it was like kept going. So her first film debut was nineteen eighty one, a teen drama called Choices that didn't really do it for her, Like that was where she Yeah, it was her debut, but nothing really happened with that. But she started to gain some serious traction after starring some Elmo's Fire in nineteen eighty five. So that was the movie that sort of put her on the map.
What a name. It just makes me think of like Sesame Street after dark.
Okay, so she's only just made her debut, but it's come out later. She has said that this is a time she was actually suffering from a drug addiction. So she came out and said that she was addicted to cocaine. At this time, right before filming sent Almost Fire, she'd actually checked into a two week rehab program. She had to have a sobriety companion with her all through filming. So she's only just been thrust into the world and she's already doing rehab. She's already got a twenty four
seven sobriety companion. She does credit the director forgetting her sober. So she's already imagine being that age, that young, and you've already gone through so much life.
And when you're eighteen, it's pretty fucking hard to know that you have a problem with substance abuse, right Like, even if you do having that self awareness of going, okay, this is no longer just me being fun having a fun party, to being like, okay, no, this is me with a problem, and then being able to have that conversation with someone who you respect, who's older than you.
He could afflicted to the side and was like, two hard basket, let's get another actress. But he didn't, And I think that that's probably a rarity in Hollywood, especially back then. But what really solidified her as the most promising new actress was in nineteen ninety she starred alongside Patrick Swayze, who we all love in Ghosts and that is still to this day. Her most successful film role is this.
This is the one where they're like making the pottery and he's like rubbing her arms and the clay and it's.
Very famous scene.
Yes, yes, still the scene.
She wanted to do a bunch of movies. A Few Good Men in Decent Proposal nineteen ninety three, Disclosure nineteen ninety four, all of her movies were opening at number one in the box office, like everything she was touching was turning to golds. So nineteen ninety five, she was already the highest paid actress in Hollywood. There were literally people fighting over her. There were bitting moors.
Yeah, she was the highest paid female actress. That she wasn't the highest paid actor just in general, but there were still plenty of men paid more than her.
She was deemed a bit of a pioneer for equal salary for women in Hollywood. She was starting the good fight. Okay, so we do know that Demi ends up with Ashton Kutcher. We love Ashton Kutcher, very handsome man. I definitely like him less after I did the deep dive on this because there's a lot that went down that I had no idea about. I know, the shiny golden boy Ashton Kutcher that the publicers have presented to us for our generation,
that's what I know. He's with Millicuners. He has this bitiful relationship, but so much stuff went down with him and Demi, and I'm going to tell you about it. A lot of the information we have is quite one sided. A lot of it is coming from Demi. She released a book, She's done a lot of interviews about it, she speaks a lot about it, so a lot of it it's coming from her side of the story, whereas Ashton has always been and still is quite private. So I want to really drive that home that we are
telling you the facts. We've done the due diligence, but a lot of them are coming from one side.
So Demi ends up with Ashton, but she also has a few marriages and serious relationships before him, doesn't she.
Demi was married at only eighteen years old. She married a musician called Freddymore.
She was married at eighteen eighteen.
Yep, she got married.
There you go.
He's a musician. He was twelve years older than her and that's where she got her surname from. More, she took his surname, but they separated in nineteen eighty three. The divorce was said in nineteen eighty five, but she kept his surname.
Isn't it interesting that such a formative part of her identity, which is her name, actually came from a marriage that she has nothing to do with anymore.
A surname you need to, you not need to, but generally you have a connection to. It's something that you want to carry on into the future. And as we know about her past, I don't imagine she had much of a connection or wanted to take that into a future. Something she wanted to leave behind. So that relationship ended. And then she got engaged to her our favorite movies and Elmos Fire set to Street on Ruth. She got engaged to her sent almost fire cost Emilio Estevez. I
absolutely love that name. Now, did you know Amelio Estevez was Charlie Sheen's brother, Because I didn't know.
That, don't dull anyway.
I got you excited about that, but they called off the engagement pretty soon after, pretty negible. Let's just scoop past that relationship. In nineteen eighty seven, the year I was born, a great year. Indeed, Demi married Die Hard star Bruce Willis.
That was a nice like their little relationship with their beautiful kids like that was so wholesome and lovely.
They went on to have three daughters that we see in the media a lot at the moment, Ruema, Scout and Tulula. But they separated in nineteen ninety eight, filing for divorce in two thousand. While in Rolling Stone in two thousand, Bruce Willis said.
I still loved Demi. We're very close.
We have three children whom we will continue to raise together. We're probably as close now as we ever were. We realized we have a lifelong commitment to our kids.
Our friendship continues. The institution has been set aside. It's difficult to live your life and marriage under a magnifying glass, which is what happens to a movie star couples. It was hard to maintain a marriage while the whole world was looking on, and we see that so much in Hollywood.
I heard and let me know if this is right. After Demi broke up with Bruce and they separated, that she went on to have not before Ashton Kutcher, which we all obviously know about. But there was another relationship and she dated like a martial arts instructor.
Yes, so she must like the action hero.
Not a famous person, just a martial arts instructor. Yep.
His name was Oliver Wickham. And this is a relationship that I think went really under the radar. They were together for three years, so it was quite serious. But yeah, he was just a martial arts instructor.
It must have been smoking hot.
They probably a lot of wrestling. Anyway, Mama, that lasted three years. It didn't work out. And this is where we meet Hollywood's hunk slash semi bad boy, Ashton Kutcher.
I don't think this is a good idea, Ashton Quiet.
It'll be fine in and out two minutes.
It's just now that we're here, I'm realizing all the reasons that this is a really dumb heist.
To Paul, don't call it a heist where let's say liberating misallocated funds.
Okay, but we go to this school, so what so if anyone sees us, then they're going to know who you are straight away.
I'll probably just think I'm pulling an all nighter in the library, cramming for finals or something.
The library is closed.
They won't know that, and you're carrying bolt cutters. Look you're being paranoid.
Damn it.
So here we have it. Hollywood actor, venture capitalist sitcom star Ashton Kutcher was arrested for trying to steal money from his own school in the dead of night. He is not the clean cut, golden boy that we all thought.
What I want to know, was he trying to steal money for himself? Like, was this like he was liberating funds he knows where it was going. When you say that, it makes it sound like it's like some sort of charity, like he's some sort of vigilante. But really, was he just being like a delinquent little shit.
Yes, he probably just wanted to go party.
But also at the time, he was actually quite a like he was quite a good student, as in, like academically, he was quite a gifted student. So he was in line for getting scholarships. There was almost like a sure pathway for him into university and he fuckd.
It our help? Well? Yes, now let's get into Ashton's backstory. He was born February seventh, nineteen seventy eight. Born in Iowa, and his real name, like everyone else in Hollywood, is not Ashton. It is Christopher Ashton, so he swapped out the middle name for the first name. His mother was a procter and gamble employee, father was a factory worker, and he actually has a fraternal twin brother called Michael. Now,
Michael has cerebral palsy and cardiomyopathy. So cartiam myopathy. It's just so you guys know, is a group of diseases that affect the heart. So Ashton is in high school, this is where he starts acting. He develops a real interest in it. But his reputation was ruined completely when he broke into that school at midnight to steal money. Because they were arrested. He was convicted of third degree burglary. He served three years probation and one hundred and eighty
hours of community service. He lost his girlfriend, he lost college scholarships, He lost a lot because of that liberating of funds, as he likes to call it, like he did, he lost. He paid the price for that. But isn't it interesting? I just feel like so many people in Hollywood have this story. Everyone's like, oh, I was arrested but look where I am Now.
People don't just buy into an actor, they buy into the person, you know, and they and that's how that you become like a mega superfan. And I think that that's been something that's so true of all the stories that we've covered on this podcast. Every single one of them has had this like overcoming adversity in their childhood. What's funny because he does really hone in on that he ended up going to university. Isn't it funny you
say this? You're like, oh, yeah, he had this really like huge thing that happened to him where he broke into a school and he did probation, he lost all his scholarships.
He went to Union. He still went to fucking Uni.
The guy's fine, you know, stop him, No, exactly.
He went to Union. This is really sweet. He went to major in biochemical engineering. And the whole point of that was that he hoped to one day q I Michael is twin brothers, Heart ailments. This is what he wanted to do. But he also worked as a model in New York. And I'm talking like the model that really gets the body out Calvin Klein.
Yeah, so he was a really struggling university student.
It was hard times, Laura so hard being a model, and he was super hot, Like we all know how hot Ashton Kutch was.
When did he start that seventies show? That was his big break, wasn't it?
What was it? Was his first job and literally the biggest show. Well, that was the seventy Show nineteen ninety eight to two thousand and six, so he was on that show for a pretty big chunk of time.
Like that was obviously like the sitcom that got him onto and into everyone's homes. But his big break was the stupidest movie in the high World that sometimes I still repeat lines off, which was Dude Wears My.
Car, which is if you watched that back now, it's not funny now, oh it's so bad, But it was so funny when we were teenagers. Yep. I'm sure you had a poster of him that used to make out with as well from that period.
Dude, where's your car? Where's your car?
Dude?
I don't know, dude, where's my car?
That was an hour and a half. That was it. That was absolutely incredible, But back then that was what was popular, and that, like you're right, that really skyrocketed him and that somehow took him as like a freally respected actor. He's pretty smart, Ashton. We do know that because you went to you need to do bio chemical engineering. But he was also a TV in his spare time. He produced and I don't know if you remember, Yeah, do you remember the show Punked? Do you remember that
prank show where he used to run around? That was it. He's just the prank.
People and it was wild. It was so wildly popular. But then he was also behind the scenes on that as well.
He executive produced, but he hosted it, and I guess that was like his little baby.
It truly was the dumbest time for comedy though, like even Punked. Wow.
But he also produced Beauty and the Geek Ad Benches in Hollywood, The Real Wedding Crashes, Opportunity Knocks Like. He was doing a lot of things behind the scenes. And the reason he was doing this This is something he said to an interviewer in two thousand and four. If anything, I'm a trier. I think more than anything, it comes from the fact that my father always had several irons in the fire. Also, I don't want to fail if
something doesn't work out. If that seventy show got canceled or if I wasn't going to have a film career, I always wanted to have a backup contingency plan, so I just started doing.
Other things well, speaking of backup contingency plans. And this is like obviously Ashton Kutchen now is obviously known for his acting. That's his very public facing profile. People might not know, but he does. He has hundreds of millions of dollars, like two hundred and fifty million in a whole lot of tech companies and some of the big ones are like Uber Airbnb.
Yeah, he's he's super behind the scenes. He's a secret investor and I think investor. He's made a lot of money on it. But this is something that I find really interesting. So in twenty eleven, he replaced Charlie Sheen on the sitcom Two and a Half Men, And you remember that, to me was engaged to Charlie's brother, Emilio
West of It. So this is all happening like before the time, she was engaged to Charlie Sheen's brother without knowing that she was going to marry the man that took Charlie Shane's job.
What a weird little like synchronicity, and it also just makes you think like Hollywood's actually just very small.
And he was earning seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars an episode, one.
Hundred and fifty thousand.
I don't know, and this is back then. I don't know why he was worrying about contingency backup plans, like the man's doing fine. You're listening to Hooked, Hitched, and hung Up, And this episode is all about the iconic early two thousands love story between Ashton Kutcher and Demimur.
How did the two of them actually come to be together?
Ashton and Demi meet by mutual friends. There's a dinner in New York City. According to the UK Mirror newspaper, they hit it off instantly. They went back to Demi's place afterwards, they talked all night, falling asleep together, very romantic. They I mean, that's they definitely had sex, That's what I'm saying. But the way that it's reported is like we just went back and talked and cuddled.
I gazed into each other's eyes.
I would not be cuddling if I was laying next to Ashton Kutcha in bed. But that's just me. I'm just saying. In two thousand and three, at the premiere of Charlie's Angels Full Throttle, Demean Ashton walk the red carpet together for the first time, So this is the first time. To the world, they were like, here we are.
I remember how it came out, and everyone was just like, oh my god, I can't believe they're dating. That's crazy. She's so much older than him, even though they literally look the same age. If you look at the photos, like, it's not that, it's not like this big weird age gap, it doesn't look like that by any means. But I think it's always so interesting when the woman is older than the man. It's such a cliche narrative that it's
just so much more shocking. If a famous man walked down a red carpet with a girl who's fifteen years younger, we would think it's normal.
Just show you how serious they were about each other. Ashton had actually converted to Kabbala, which is a form of Judaism, and that is something that Demi had been practicing for a while. So I mean, to convert religion, you're very serious about your relationship. So they were pretty serious from the get go, Demi's daughter, Rumor happened she had a huge crush on Weird. So Ashton was like, because they're closing, get it, momyre closer.
She's like, tap that girl.
Then all of a sudden, your mom brings home your crush. You'd be like, have you brought him home for me?
Mum? Or But also imagine they then get married and you're like, hey daddy, hey step daddy, this is weird for everybody.
She says, it wasn't weird. She's like, at the end of the day, the second you know your mother is dating someone, you don't see them like that anymore. Because there are a lot of you know, those late night talk shows, a lot of people tried to get some some of the pull these awkwardness out of rumor. But she was like, it wasn't awkward anymore. Yeah, I had to crush on him, The whole world had to crush on him. But when he's banging your mom, you definitely don't look at him like that anymore.
Yeah.
If there's one way to be turned off, it's thinking about anyone banging your mom.
In two thousand and five to me tells half as bizarre I feel that we are married and that we don't need something formal, so to do so isn't a big deal one way or the other. It's not like we're holding out. People of his saying are you gonna get married where you guys at She's like, nah, we feel like we are anyway. But then surprise they get married at the same year.
I mean, you gotta love it when people play it cool, because like, you know, maybe he hadn't composed yet, and maybe she was really just like, yeah, yeah, we're taking it slow. We're taking it slow, but like obviously not the end of the day. You always just want to get proposed to. Like so many people say, oh yeah, we're just like seeing what happens. I can't cook girl.
I don't think she was playing it cool. I think she was trying to divert the media attention.
Oh.
I think she's trying to be like, oh, we might knowing that they're going to get married. So they got married the same year, as she said, I don't know if we'll get married. We're pretty happy. They had like a secret Beverly Hills wedding with one hundred guests, including her ex Bruce Willis, because they are best friends, they are happy families. All the kids were there, and this is where for the next five years or so, we see loads of appearances like with the whole blended family.
We see Bruce, we see Ashton, the kids to me, like photos together at a bens.
I remember this time. I remember the time of like the happy family of like six of them just going out and having family photos. And it's an amazing thing to see such a great example of what a blended family, a modern family can look like.
So when Demi and Ashton were together, they were really passionate activists. They did start a foundation in twenty ten that seeks to protect children from being forced into sexual slavery. So they were doing really really good things in that world.
Yeah, that's amazing. The specific type of charity that they created. It makes me think back to how that might have been a tie in to Demi's childhood, you know, like knowing that she never wants anybody else to go through what she went through or potentially went through. That that's where this real drive for creating this charity may have
come from. This story it does cast a pretty dark bad light on Ashton, and as we said, this is a lot of the stories coming from Deme's side, But I think it is really important here to really hone in on the work that Ashton did in a really important space. He puts a lot of energy and time and money into it, So I really want to drive that point home to the guy is very, very young, and who you are in your mid tis twenties is not who you are when you're in your late.
Thirties, Like to me, actually acknowledged the age difference and that that's probably a reason she was attracted to him in the first place.
She said, keep in mind, when I was twenty five, I became a mom. I skipped straight from being a young adult into motherhood and marriage. When I met Ashton, it almost.
Felt like a doover, like I could just go back in time and experience what it was like to be young with him, much more so than I had ever been able to experience it when I was actually in my twenties. So I think she just felt like she missed out in a lot. Her kids have grown up, She's met this young, hot, successful actor, and she's lot. Fuck it, I'm just going to go and live my best life and live something that I feel like I had taken away a.
Bit when to Me was doing that movie early on, and the director got her sober, He got her sober off everything, like she to me lives her life without drinking, without partying, without doing drugs, and this was obviously a time in Ashton's twenties where he was partying, and maybe their life to voices in a line.
Yeah, and speaking of addiction, Demi actually said she was addicted to Ashton, so she got sober. Obviously, She's like, I was absolutely addicted to him, and she's like, I recognized that it was unhealthy. She thinks that that's probably what caused him to end up distancing himself, because he started lying about where he was. He was spending less time with her, and she thinks she probably ended up being too much. She probably ended up smothering him. And
this becomes evident, and this is where it unravels. In twenty eleven, six years after they got together, tabloids started reporting that Ashton had cheated on to Me, including one story that started, of all places, at a bowling alley.
Oh my god, that is Ashton Kutcher and to me more, what's up girl? You are not going to believe this. I'm at work at the Bowling Alley right now, and Ashon Kutcher is here.
I don't believe it.
I'm serious. And he is with Demi Moore and one of her kids.
Her lady from Ghost.
Yeah, and she just keeps on like bowling strikes. God, I want to be Demi more so bad. Oh wait, wait wait I think he's coming over. Wait what queen back? Hi there you you are Ashton Kutcher. Uh yeah, from that seventies show uh uh huh and the Butterfly Effect. I love that movie.
Yeah.
I was actually just and that really bad Steve Jobs movie that everyone hated it then forgot about when a really good Steve Job's movie came out like two years later, and then Michael Fassbender played Steve Jobs way better that one.
I just don't know how to answer that.
Oh sorry, I am so sorry for staring. But you are the beautiful.
Oh well, thank you, you're quite beautiful.
Your soul?
My god, why don't I give back these bowling shoes? And uh you give me your number? This is absolutely wild. This is where it all comes out. This is where it starts. Ashton cheats on demimor his wife with a twenty one year old woman that he met at a bowling alley.
Can I say this though? You know when earlier when Demi was saying that she felt like she was smothering him, like, you know, she want to know where he was, and he was lying to a blah blah blah. It doesn't matter where he is, He's going to cheat on you when you're in the room, girlfriend, like if you kids absolutely crazy when you think about it like so, and when you think how many women would have been throwing themselves at him, to think that this is the opportunity
he takes, it makes you question. I'm sure he probably took a few liberties elsewhere.
Well, I think he did. Demi says, I remember the night they met. We were at a bowling alley with rumor, and when he went to switch out the shoes, she gave him her number on a napkin. Or that's what he told me at the time. When we got home that night and he had showed it to me, I said, that is just gross. We were there with our kid. I had a real visceral response. It was revulsion. So the fact that he had pursued her felt like a real fuck you This wasn't the only time Ashton Kutcher
stepped out and did the wrong thing. There was a woman at the hard Rock Hotel that Ashton had apparently slept with, and this all came out by a Google alert on Demi's phone. So that is how she found out that he had just gone to the hard Rock Hotel and cheated on her.
Way as in like a Google alert, like a news article came up.
US Weekly, Yep, that's what happened.
I would really fucking suck Neil.
Notification from US Weekly. San Diego woman reveal she said with Ashton Kutcher at.
The hard Rock Hotel.
This is all according to US Weekly, he was staying with friends at San Diego hard Rock Hotel. Demi was promoting a short film project, so they weren't together. It was their anniversary. The story goes that Ashton and his friends were prowling for women, that's the quote, but to no avail. They headed back to their room and at four am they met a woman named Sarah Leal. Ashton invited Lel and her friend to his room, where within five minutes they were all naked in the hotsab making out.
This is on their anniversary he is having a threesome. So Demi's got this google it. She called Ashton right away, probably hoping he would say I'm not crazy, like that is crazy, but he straight up goes, Yep, it's true, which speaks volumes. I guess for maybe where he is in that relationship or where his head's at where he's like, I not, I'm gonna argue with it. Yep, you caught me.
It truly says a lot, doesn't it. It's almost like it's gotten to a point where he's not like he's intentionally sabotaging it, but it's that's an easy out that seems like a coward's out, like yes, I got cheated on, please leave me nout. It's just like, how do you recover from that?
Well, you're going to love his excuse, Laura. He straight up sent it to me that he was confused about the status of their relationship and what was allowed and what was okay because Demi and Ashton had had consensual
threesomes in the past. They had done that, they were having a lot of fun in their relationship, so he was like, oh, it just blurred the line, like I thought that that men I could go and have other threesome, but just like not with you, but not while you're there on our anniversary, and not so that you know about.
Like, so he's trying to gaslight her, as what we're saying. So he gaslighted to me more into feeling that she should feel guilty for the fact that they had a consensual threesome and that should have given him leeway to do anything. Wow. Great, Yeah, and.
To me as a memoir, she says, he was looking for a way to deflect blame to maintain his perception of himself as a decent family guy. So I guess he probably convinced himself he probably actually genuinely believed that, you know, when someone tells a lie so many times that it becomes a truth. He probably really believed that, Oh, I was confused. You had three reasons before I thought it was okay.
Maybe it was just a way for him to be able to like absolve himself for the guilt that he felt for doing the wrong thing. You know, it's like when you can pass a bit of that blame onto the other person, you then don't have to sit in the full immense gravity of what that guilt feels like the fact that you fucked that up and you hurt that other person, you know.
Yes, And this is also where very unfortunately, Demi relapses into substance abuse. She had twenty years of sobriety, and she claims that Ashton made it pretty difficult for her to maintain that sobriety while they were together. She comes out and openly talks on Jada Pinkett Smith's podcast Red Table. You know they we all know that show. They all
on the Red Table. She said that Ashton had said to her, now twenty years of sobriety, she said, Ashton said to her, I don't know if alcoholism is a thing.
I just think it's about moderation.
So he's taking that away from her. Here's someone that's struggling with sobriety and he's living a really good life sober, and he's saying, I don't think that's a thing. Why can't you just control yourself?
So she did.
She started to think that, oh, he wants someone, he wants a partner that he can sit down with and have a wine with and have a dinner with. So she started to do that. She's like, I was trying to be someone I thought he wanted me to be. He'd convinced me that that, you know, sobriety wasn't even a thing, and alcoholism wasn't a thing. So she started to have a wine here or there, and that's where it just completely unraveled and always always made her feel
guilty for that. So if she had had a few and a rough night, he would then show her a photo the next day of her with her head in the toilet and sort of make her feel really really shit about it, even though he was semi encouraging of it in the first place. So it sounds like it was getting pretty toxic.
We kind of need to value just how incredible it is to do twenty years of sobriety, Like that's a really amazing thing for a person to be able to achieve. To then get to a point where they're led to feel as though they're not going to be as loved by their partner unless they can have a good time and you know, just be a bit more of the cool girl and a bit more chill and have a glass of wine. Really undervalues and undermines what she has spent twenty years creating for herself a life of sobriety.
Yeah, and I think this is where she comes to a bit of a realization. So he always used to make her feel bad. He would come home, he'd be angry at her, he'd be disappointed in her. She said, he would have no compassion for the fact that she had this problem in the first place. But then she sort of acknowledges that, you know what, maybe I put too much stress on him and there was too much maturity expected from such a young person because he was only in his twenties.
I think that there are people out there who aret twenty five years old can have responsible, loving, respectful relationships where monogamy is not a problem. But she is expecting too much of where he is at at twenty five. As as that specific person, you know, I think that potentially the person that Ashen is now in his late thirties verse that version of himself. I think there's probably a lot of growth that's gone into that person, you know.
And she thinks that maybe what happened to her is happening to him. She realizes that, like, so she's in her forties now, and she's gone back to me with someone in her twenties because she lost her twenties. Now She's thinking, I've taken the same twenties. Yeap, is the same thing happening to Ashton? Has he lost his twenties and that's why this is unraveling.
So I do remember Demi more and Ashen getting pregnant.
Now, this is really sad. They already had a bit of a tumultuous relationship, but then to add to it, they were pregnant. When they got to six months, dem miscarriage. So miscarriage is hard at absolutely any stage, it's always horrific, but six months on it is so advanced and the whole world is what she knew. She really blames herself for that.
Pregnancy loss so traumatic, it's so devastating. Women live with so much guilt over every small thing that they may have done wrong when something like this happens.
They were facing a lot. Demi was finding her own private battles. They had a huge age gap, they had cheating, they had a miscarriage, and all of this was under public scrutiny, under the public eye. In twenty eleven, the same year that the first reports of Ashen's infidelity were noted, that they called it quits, and Demi announcing a statement to the press. It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six
year marriage to Ashton. As a woman, a mother, and a wife, there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life. This is a trying time for me and my family, and so I would ask for some compassion and privacy that you would give to anyone going through a similar situation.
That statement is not a conscious uncoupling statement. That's a I'm leaving this marriage because you didn't hold up your side of the bargain. Fuck you, That's what that is. It's a really nice way of saying, you fucked this up and I deserve better. Because this had been played out publicly across the media, people already knew that, so of course she was in some way going to allude that to the fact that that had impacted their relationship and the demise of their relationship. Well.
He also made a statement, I will forever cherish the time I spent with Demi. Marriage is one of the most difficult things in the world, and unfortunately sometimes they fail because you cheat. But I guess We're never going to know if it was the tragic, tumultuous part that to me had grown up. Was it the traumas that she faced, the alcoholism, or was it the difference in age, was it his cheating?
What all these compounding factors, And you know, like this story really does paint Ashton as like quite the villain in this relationship. I mean, there definitely were aspects of his behavior that were terrible, and maybe there was aspects of demeise behavior that made it incredibly hard to you know, having an addictive personality, maybe being controlling over him and of the situation, wanting to know where he was and
what he was doing at all time. Not that they both necessarily contribute equally to the demise of it, but both people have contributed to that relationship equally. Maybe they met each other for a reason and at a time to help each other through some things or to go through some things.
But I think that it's pretty easy to see why it didn't work out. There were just a lot of things stacked against them.
When we look at where they are in their own points in life. Like Ashon's moved on, he's with Millerkunas, who was his co star from that seven year show.
Demise as well. She's also moved on, which is really nice. And she's actually with a former pro cyclist, Daniel Hump, so that's cool too. She's got her own happy end, dude.
Do you know what? Though, this was a bit of a sadder story, but it's nice to come full circle and to know that they're both in happy relationships, that they've both moved on with their lives and moved on to better things. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Hook, Pitch and hung Up, where we jump into some of the spiciest.
And well known celebrity relationships.
Hook Titch and hung Up is a podcast from iHeart Podcast Australia, dead Set Studios and the Kiss Network. Make sure you hit follow on your podcast app and listen to any of the previous episodes that you might have missed, because there are some really wild stories in there about breakups and makeups and all the spiciest celebrity relationships of all time.