Signs of strain in the marriage between Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman were apparent as early as this past July.
DailyMail.com confirmed on Monday that the celebrity couple are separating after 19 years of marriage.
The pair, who share daughters Sunday, 17, and Faith, 14, have been kept apart of late amid their hectic filming and touring schedules – with an insider saying Kidman was left ‘blindsided’ by the split.
And now, Urban’s reaction to a racy question from a radio show has resurfaced which indicates that maybe he was struggling to deal with aspects of his wife’s Hollywood career.
The country music hitmaker called into the Mix102.3 Adelaide radio show Hayley & Max in the Morning in Australia on July 1 to promote a series of upcoming shows.
The interview began innocuously enough with Urban saying he always enjoyed playing in Adelaide. But it got uncomfortable when the Grammy-winning singer, 57, took part in a radio game titled Wall of Truth.
Signs of tension in the marriage between Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman were apparent as early back as July; Pictured in NYC in 2023
The host quizzed Urban about his wife appearing in ‘love scenes’ causing him to abruptly quit the interviews he was doing via Zoom.
Daily Mail has reached out to Mix102.3 Adelaide for further comment on the story.
One of the hosts specifically referenced actor Zac Efron, 37, who appeared in an intimate scene opposite Kidman, 58, in the 2024 Netflix film A Family Affair.
‘What does Keith Urban think when he sees his beautiful wife with beautiful younger men like Zac Efron, having these beautiful love scenes?’ host Max Burford asked Urban.
Urban did not reply and it was revealed he had gone.
‘I think his team hung up on us because they didn’t want us to ask that question,’ a program producer is heard explaining.
Burford asked: ‘Does Keith Urban hate us? Do we have beef with Keith Urban?’
The show’s Hayley Pearson said, ‘He hates us – I knew that was going to happen.’
Pearson said that she thought the line of questioning might have been too direct. ‘I’ve had this feeling… that they don’t like these personal questions at all.’
Urban dropped off a Zoom in which he was asked about Nicole Kidman’s love scenes with costars such as Zac Efron; Kidman and Efron seen in a still
Kidman and Efron pictured at the world premiere after party for Netflix’s ‘A Family Affair’ at Sunset Tower Hotel Hollywood in 2024
The actress also starred as a business executive who started a risky affair with her much-younger intern, played by Harris Dickinson, in erotic thriller Babygirl last year; Seen in a still
Pearson added: ‘He doesn’t like the personal stuff… he doesn’t like talking about his wife… it’s private.”
An insider later told People that Urban had nothing to do with the disconnection and that he ‘did not hang up, period.’
‘He doesn’t host his Zoom interviews. This is a complete nothingburger.’
The Australian actress and Urban were last seen together publicly in June this year, when they were pictured attending a FIFA World Cup match in Nashville, Tennessee.
A source told The Daily Mail: ‘Keith never sees Nicole, either she is filming or he is on tour. There was a lot of love between the two and they might not divorce, but there is a world that they both live where neither of them are in it.
‘Keith and Nicole have been together for decades and there is a world which they can reconcile, but the way their pairing is now, it is not a couple.’
The country star has been away for much of the year on his High and Alive World Tour.
He is due to perform in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Thursday.
Kidman and the children, meanwhile, have remained in Nashville, where the couple own a $4million compound.
TMZ reported Monday that ‘Keith has acquired his own residence in Nashville and has moved out of their family home.’
The chat was of renewed interest amid news the celebrity couple are separating after 19 years of marriage
Over the summer, the actress and their kids stayed in England while she filmed the sequel to her 1998 movie Practical Magic. She was paying a reported £65,000 ($87,000) each month to rent a luxurious Hampstead mansion once owned by pop star Boy George.
While the London move was for work, it certainly raised eyebrows back in Kidman’s native Australia.
‘[Kidman and Urban] do make an effort to speak every day when they’re apart, but it is shocking how much time they’ve spent apart since Nicole’s mother died last September,’ an insider told local magazine Woman’s Day earlier this month. ‘It’s like they both went their separate ways.’
Meanwhile last September, while promoting her Netflix series The Perfect Couple, Kidman admitted there was no such thing as a ‘perfect’ marriage.
‘There’s no perfect anything,’ she said, ‘anything that’s presented as perfect… forget it.’
Yet earlier that year, the star said she was ‘so lucky’ to have met the singer.
‘I’m so lucky that I have Keith who’s just my love, my deep, deep love,’ she told People magazine.
‘I’m so lucky that I have Keith… that gives me the ability to go and do whatever I have to do because I know where I can come back,’ she added.
The pair wed back in 2006 during a traditional Catholic ceremony at the Cardinal Cerretti Chapel in her hometown of Sydney
The couple are seen together in October 2024
The couple welcomed Sunday in July 2008 – Kidman is seen around four months pregnant in February 2008
The news of their split comes just weeks after Kidman marked nearly two decades of marriage with Urban by sharing a heartfelt tribute to the country star on their 19th wedding anniversary.
To mark the special occasion, the Big Little Lies star posted a sweet black and white photo of them sharing a sweet moment backstage at one of his shows.
In the image, the Oscar winner can be seen with one arm draped lovingly over her husband’s shoulders as he held her hand.
The happy couple both closed their eyes as Kidman rested her forehead against Urban’s head.
‘Happy Anniversary Baby ❤️ @KeithUrban,’ she captioned the post, which received more than 25,023 likes in less than an hour.
Within minutes, the Somebody Like You hitmaker commented a single red heart emoji.
The pair wed back in 2006 during a traditional Catholic ceremony at the Cardinal Cerretti Chapel in her hometown of Sydney.
Kidman and Urban married five years after her split from actor Tom Cruise.
She welcomed Sunday in July 2008 and Faith via surrogate two years later.
In 2022, the singer insisted that he and his wife are ‘as normal as you get’ on an episode of Jessica Rowe’s podcast series The Big Talk Show.
He also spoke about the very first time they met at the G’Day LA event in 2005, saying he thought the stunning Hollywood star was ‘well out of his league.’
‘We’re just a couple who work things out, go through things together, life, and support each other the best way we can and try and raise our family,’ Urban explained.
‘Underneath it all, we’re as normal as you can get I reckon,’ he claimed, before reflecting he was ‘not in a great place’ when they first met.
‘[She] seemed well out of my league at that time in my life,’ he said.
‘I was not in a great place at my life, struggling with a lot of things, not in a million years would someone like that see anything in me… The fact that became what it is meant to be is astounding.’
He also sweetly described his wife as ‘ethereal, angelic, other worldly, very mystical and then completely down to earth at the same time and very funny.’
Last year, Urban reflected on how he nearly destroyed his marriage, not long after they walked down the aisle.
‘We got married in 2006, and barely four months into our marriage, the addictions that I had done really nothing about blew our marriage to smithereens,’ he said while presenting at the AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute to Kidman last year.
Urban revealed that he was struggling with addiction when he first met Nicole and with her support he managed to eventually pull through.
‘Four months into a marriage, and I’m in rehab for three months with no idea what was going to happen to us.
Kidman is seen with the couple’s nepo baby daughter Sunday, 17, in January 2025
‘Nic pushed through every negative voice – I’m sure even some of her own – and she chose love.
‘And here we are tonight 18 years later. Her capacity to love is like no one I’ve ever met,’ he concluded.
The father-of-two, whose previously said he grew up watching his father’s heavy drinking, previously said it took him ‘a long time to get sober’ because he didn’t ‘recognize’ his alcoholism.
