‘Heartless’: Extreme Hugh Jackman meltdown revealed

The end of the Wolverine star’s marriage and beginning of a new relationship have sparked extraordinary scenes online.

OPINION

It’s a good thing that the medieval stocks were done away with about the time the wimple went out of fashion because otherwise I fear that there would be a bunch of people stocking up on rotten fruit right now. (But eggs? In this economy?)

The target: Hugh Jackman, the biceps himself who has gone from spankingly adored heart-throb to right proper scoundrel, all over the end of his 27-year marriage to actress Deborah-Lee Furness.

There’s really nothing like an internet scorned or at least feeling like they had been sold a monogamous lemon.

“Zero respect.” “So disappointed in him”. “I hope Deb takes him to the cleaners.”

The commenterati, on news stories and social media, are very clearly taking the end of the Jackman-Furness union not so much badly as narrowing their eyes and starting to sharpen their pitchforks.

It’s a stunning reversal of fortune for the man formerly known as Our Hugh and who was about one charming media appearance or him being papped bounding out of the surf in Bondi from being put on the new $5 note.

Hugh Jackman is considered by many to be a national treasure. Photo: Supplied

So join me now in feeling just a bit sorry for a man worth in the vicinity of $400 million and with a physique so chiselled you could grate Reggiano on his abs. Truly.

The reaction to his divorce from 90s TV star-turned-devoted-other-half Deb has been swift and fierce given, let’s be honest, these two were never exactly our Brad and Jen. Theirs was too homey, too redoubtably stolid a union, too boring in a way that probably made the hearts of marketing execs trying to fill movie theatres in Missouri for a Marvel release filled with glee.

(Also, there were always those whispers about showtune-loving Hugh’s lifelong fondness for belting out Gershwin hits while shuffle, ball change, shuffle tap dancing.)

Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness pictured in Sydney in 1999 attending the Fox Studios Gala Opening. Picture: Patrick Riviere/Getty Images

But, the world bought into, wholeheartedly, Good Guy Hugh.

Then in September 2023 came the great hammer blow – Hugh and Deb announced they were divorcing with the mandatory People press release wheeling out all the right very measured, hackneyed words we get in moments like this like “next chapter” and “gratitude, love, and kindness.”

Except, nearly immediately sleuths dug up photos of Hugh beaming with actress Sutton Forest, his co-star in the Broadway production of The Music Man, and mumblings grew that maybe his split from Deb wasn’t quite so ‘loving’ and ‘kind’ after all.

In January 2025, 16 months after the divorce announcement, photos emerged of Hugh and Sutton leaving a restaurant in Malibu holding-hands in what seemed like the world’s most unsubtle, dial-a-pap way of soft launching their relationship.

The online reaction was swift and brutal.

The finger pointing and the denunciations only grew when, a couple of weeks later, photos of the Wolverine star and Sutton doing something so scandalising as walking around Los Angeles in trackie pants while smiling.

“They seem callous and totally heartless in their public [PDA].”

“Sorry, I’ve lost all respect for Hugh Jackman. No longer a fan.”

Jackman and Foster were pictured on February 10, 2022. Picture: Nina Westervelt/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images

“Will never watch anything he’s in again.”

“I use to like him because he had seemed so in love and committed to Deb. Nope, he’s just like so many other cheaters.”

“I hope Sutton Foster is worth it because I have a feeling he has lost most of his fan base because of his affair.”

“I’m just not sure how to be happy for these home wreckers, especially when one of the things I loved about him was how much he loved his older wife … I just thought better of him.”

“I hope his career crashes”.

“Lost all respect for the man I once admired.”

Grips? The internet has well and truly lost theirs when it comes to Hugh’s love life.

So harsh has the tone and tenor been of the public’s reaction you’d think he had been caught running a disabled dog-fighting ring or had been secretly selling meth to underage extras on the Marvel backlot.

There was backlash after the duo got together. Picture: Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

The general feeling seems to be that Hugh has broken an unspoken contract to live up to what we want him to be – and which he himself has sold to us too – and now the internet feels badly let down and emboldened to really let him have it with both barrels.

Yes, his marriage ended, an obviously sad event and I don’t want to minimise the hurt here.

But the disproportionality of things, the extremity of the backlash and the tub-thumping moralising is remarkable.

The general feeling seems to be that Hugh has broken an unspoken contract to live up to what we want him to be. Picture: Jay Maidment/2024 20th Century Studios/Marvel

Yes, the brand Hugh built over the course of a couple of decades was Devoted Family Man but a divorce and him getting an age-appropriate girlfriend is not equivalent to it being revealed he’s spent the last 15 years taking part in multi-day pantsless bacchanals on a private Greek island or that he’d been spending his X Men pay cheques for all these years on copious quantities of hookers and coke. On a Greek island.

But as far as celebrity ‘scandals’ go this has to be the most vanilla, most unremarkable, most normal one that has ever ‘rocked’ the internet.

What’s so fascinating from a sort of swattish, spectacley-sociological perspective is watching people who have never and will never know Hugh and Deb and Sutton taking such hardline and emotional views.

People make hard, painful decisions about relationships and love every day but they don’t usually face the threat of finding their career chucked in the toilet or being stoned the next time they venture out to a Bunnings.

And Deb? She definitely deserves half of that $400 million.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.