Where the HBO drama Succession ends and the real lives of the Murdoch dynasty begin is a boundary that has become increasingly blurred, not least because rumours about which sibling is feeding lines to the hit show have reportedly sparked genuine family conflict.
Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan’s alleged belief that his brother James is collaborating with Succession’s producers was among the series of revelations contained in a bombshell article for Vanity Fair.
Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who has spent decades writing about the Murdoch business, spoke to several well-placed sources who painted a bleak picture of the super-wealthy family. “I was struck by how sad all the Murdochs seem,” he wrote.
While the main takeaway for Succession fans will be that the Murdoch family’s lives are imitating art that imitates their lives, the article contained several striking revelations.
Wendi Deng and his broken back
In early 2018, Hall found Murdoch in “excruciating pain on the cabin floor” of his 140ft yacht, the article claims. He had to be lowered by stretcher on to a port in Guadalupe, where he spent a night on a gurney before being flown by private jet to a UCLA hospital.
“He kept almost dying,” a person close to the family told Vanity Fair. Doctors, who diagnosed Murdoch with arrhythmia and a broken back, spotted that Murdoch had fractured vertebrae before – he reportedly suggested his ex-wife Wendi Deng had pushed him into a piano during a fight. Vanity Fair reports that Deng did not respond to its requests for comment.
He dumped Jerry Hall via email
“Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” Murdoch’s email to his then wife, Jerry Hall, began, according to a screenshot Sherman has read. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do … My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.”
Hall told friends she was blindsided, as the couple never fought. Hall and Murdoch divorced two months later, which reportedly included a condition that she could not give story ideas to Succession writers. She was also given an Oxfordshire home, where the magazine reports she discovered surveillance cameras were sending footage to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them.
He’s been unwell – but remains convinced he will live forever
In recent years, Murdoch has broken his back, had seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation and torn an achilles tendon, according to a source. He apparently collapsed, dressed “like Tom Wolfe” in a white suit and red tie, at his granddaughter’s wedding a day after emerging from hospital where he had been treated for Covid-19.
He may joke about his immortality and reference his mother’s longevity – she died at 103 – but a source said his family liked to remind the nonagenarian: “Forty may be the new 30, but 80 is 80.”
He is consumed by the question of his succession
Just like in the HBO show, Murdoch has long wanted one of his three children from his second marriage – Elisabeth, 54, Lachlan, 51, and James, 50 – to take over the family business.
One interviewee close to the family said: “He pitted his kids against each other their entire lives. It’s sad.”
Each of the children has been a potential successor, and they will have the final say on the company’s future. According to sources briefed on the trust’s governance, Murdoch has four votes while Elisabeth, Lachlan, James and Prudence, Murdoch’s daughter from his first marriage, each have one. After Murdoch’s death, his votes will be distributed equally – the key question is where their loyalties lie.
Two people close to James Murdoch say he is biding his time until he and his sisters can wrest control from Lachlan. Some think James would purge Fox News and transform it into a centre-right alternative to CNN; others think he would sell up to private equity, prompting a “visceral fear” inside the network about its future.
Whether Lachlan, a reputed fan of “the good life”, even wants the top job is another question – though several sources confirmed he did.
People think he’s lost the plot
An “erratic” approach to Murdoch’s personal life and media empire in recent years has “left even those in his orbit wondering if he’s lost the plot”, Sherman writes.
This includes Murdoch’s two-week engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former radio host with QAnon-style political leanings, prompting speculation he has been “radicalised by his own echo chamber”.
Yet one source close to Murdoch told the magazine he had called off the engagement after becoming uncomfortable with Smith’s outspoken evangelical views.
Sherman identifies Murdoch’s most “damaging error” as Fox News’s coverage of Donald Trump’s 2020 US presidential election defeat, which has resulted in a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, revealing that Fox News executives “didn’t believe Trump’s stolen election conspiracies even as the network was cravenly promoting the lies for ratings”.
Murdoch ‘knew Trump was an idiot’
Although Murdoch’s fortunes have become entwined with Trump’s, he loathed “Trump’s nativism and know-nothingism”, Sherman writes, citing a family source. In particular, Murdoch was angry with Trump’s erratic pandemic policies, such as suggesting Americans inject themselves with bleach, sources said.
Sherman frames Fox News’s subsequent adulation of Trump in the White House as a “continuation of Murdoch’s time-tested strategy of forging alliances with politicians across the ideological spectrum as long as they advanced his interests”.
In 2020, Murdoch is said to have invited the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for lunch, where he was told that Fox News would support him for president in 2024.
His sons competed for his affections through a business deal
James and Lachlan Murdoch went to war over Disney’s proposal to buy 21st Century Fox, the magazine reports. One source said James championed the deal because he thought a top job at Disney would enable him to impress his father with his professionalism, rather than being seen as “the child where, no matter what you do, the other son is always better”.
Lachlan, who believed “he was going to be the next Rupert”, felt the deal undervalued Fox’s assets. As tensions rose, three sources said, he had a panic attack about the merger, although a source “close to Lachlan” denies this.
The eventual deal – which resulted in Lachlan becoming chief executive of Murdoch’s newly formed Fox Corporation – was a “career triumph” for his father, Sherman wrote. “It solved his succession problems. James was out. Lachlan was in.”
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