Toronto TV personality Mary Jo Eustace feels a great deal of empathy these days for Jennifer Aniston.
Like the jilted actress, left by Brad Pitt for his pillow-lipped co-star Angelina Jolie, Eustace's husband of 12 years, Dean McDermott, dumped her for his bleached-blond co-star Tori Spelling. On Sunday, Spelling, 32, and McDermott, 39, tied the knot on a beach in Fiji.
McDermott, a North Toronto native who has flaunted his romantic entanglement since the couple's engagement over the Christmas holidays, was quoted on the weekend as saying: "I've never had as much of a desire to get married and make a woman my wife as I've had with her. The feeling is overwhelming. We're soulmates."
Yesterday, Eustace, 44, summed that comment up as "the final nail. What is that? Let's completely negate 13 years," said the now single mom, who has a 7½-year-old son and 10-month-old adopted daughter (the little girl arrived three weeks before McDermott met Spelling on the Ottawa set for the TV movie Mind Over Murder.)
"It all could have been done so different," sighs Eustace, a former co-host of Canada AM and the Life Network's long-running What's for Dinner? "Right from the beginning, it was all about them. I confronted him once and said, 'Do you know how [all this publicity]makes me and my family feel? Do not do this.' He was like, 'I did not even look at it that way.' "
Unlike McDermott's breakup with Eustace, however, his tropical wedding came as no surprise to his wife. "Logistically, because I had to take care of my son, I asked him point-blank. I didn't want any more surprises. I was given a two-week window," says Eustace, speaking on the telephone from her temporary home in Los Angeles. She plans to move back to Toronto with her family on June 4.
Last week, the New York Post's Page Six reported that Eustace was shopping a tell-all book to publishers about her last 12 months called My Husband Left Me for Tori Spelling.
To date, Eustace has written the first few chapters, which chronicle the lows of going through a very public divorce, with a heavy dose of humour thrown in.
"The past year was a nightmare, but it was also funny. I have to have a lot of humour about it. I have to embrace that side of it or I'd dis-empower myself. So I will talk about meeting George Clooney at a party and possibly giving him lice, and about the meltdown I had at the driver's licence bureau because I'd missed my appointment. I started to cry and told the guy my husband had left me for Tori Spelling. He let me take my test," she adds, refusing to divulge more details. "So, see, it has an upside too."
Eustace is also currently in discussions with S&S Productions ( The Red Green Show, Balance) and CTV to launch another daily lifestyle show.
"It has been a horrendous situation, but the upside is the huge support I've received from people who are important in my life. I had to change. I had to re-evaluate everything and come up with a plan for my new life. I'm trying to only look forward and I try hard not to dwell in the negativity of this. Look, I was flipped into single motherhood, and I admit, the cavalier attitude with which they flaunt their relationship is hard to take. But I'm getting through."
After he proposed to Spelling in Toronto last Christmas, McDermott was quoted gushing in People Magazine, "It was so magical. All the stars aligned. I have never been happier in my life." He also is reported to have the words, "Truly, Madly, Deeply Tori" tattooed on his wrist and a headshot of his new bride tattooed on his arm.
Spelling -- the daughter of heavyweight TV producer Aaron Spelling ( Dynasty, Melrose Place) -- is best known for her role in her dad's drama, Beverly Hills: 90210. She also currently has her own VH1 celebrity sitcom called So noTORIous.
When McDermott left last summer for the nearly month-long Mind Over Murder shooton which he was to meet Spelling, McDermott and Eustace's newly adopted daughter was three weeks old. (He is no longer legally her adoptive father.) Spelling was also married when they hooked up, and filed for divorce from actor-writer Charlie Shanian 15 months after a lavish, $1-million (U.S.) wedding at the Spellings' Hollywood Hills home.
Eustace -- who is very close to her parents and three siblings -- agreed to move to Los Angeles last spring to further McDermott's career. After the TV movie wrapped in Ottawa, McDermott flew back to California where he met his family for a holiday in Palm Springs. Coming in after a round of golf about two days into their vacation, Eustace said she asked her husband what was wrong because he'd been acting strange.
"I funnily enough said, 'Have you met someone?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Is it Tori Spelling?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Have you slept with her?' He said, 'Yes, we're soulmates. She loves me unconditionally." I laughed at first. I really thought it was a joke. It was a complete and utter shock."
On Sept. 12, 2005, McDermott served Eustace divorce papers. The divorce became final March 13. "I got the divorce papers when I was doing homework with my son," she adds.
Due to U.S. residency laws, Eustace could not leave the country once McDermott served her divorce papers. She had to fight to be able to move with his children back to Canada, while her marital woes were splashed through the tabloids.
"I was in the trenches. I was fighting to get back home. To get things settled. I was completely in survival mode," says Eustace. "After the divorce, that's when things started hitting me. I had to fight legally to be able to leave, which was very difficult. We'd been here such a short period of time." McDermott and Eustace sold their renovated home in Toronto's tony Yorkville and moved to Hollywood in December, 2004.
She met McDermott 14 years ago at a Fashion Cares benefit ball. He was working with some buddies on security. "Dean came up to me and said, 'I know you. I've been in love with you for three years. We talked that night and the next day at work, he sent me flowers," she remembers.
"I have a great deal of empathy for Jennifer Aniston," adds Eustace. "She said something I found very interesting, profound and accurate. She said I'm not going to be defined by this situation and this relationship. If you allow yourself to reside in that place, you won't be able to function. Psychologically, you feel like a prisoner. But you have to find ways to empower yourself. To kick yourself and rise above it."
Gayle MacDonald