How Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster became the new ‘Bennifer’

As a seasoned celebrity photographer, Jesal Parshotam knows timing is everything. At the beginning of this year, he sensed that Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, rumoured for months to be an item, might finally be ready to take their relationship public.

Parshotam saw that Jackman had celebrated Christmas with family in his native Australia. Meanwhile, he knew that Foster was wrapping up a four-week run of Once upon a Mattress at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. So he reasoned that after the holidays, the movie star would probably make the 13-hour flight to Southern California and stop to see her before flying home to New York.

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster at the Tony Awards this month. Are they the new Bennifer?Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Photo

The LA-based photographer worked his Australian media sources to confirm this hunch, and – after studying Foster’s social media for clues – mapped out an area where they were likely to turn up.

In the early days of January, his detective work paid off. Parshotam not only found the two stars walking hand-in-hand in Santa Monica, he also ran into another photographer on their trail who, he learnt, had an arrangement with People magazine, he said.

Jackman and Foster in The Music Man – falling in love on stage every night may have had a huge impact.Credit: Julieta Cervantes

On Monday, January 6, People blasted out an exclusive news alert that Jackman and Foster had been spotted on a dinner date, their interlocked hands finally confirming a romance. Parshotam, working with celebrity news agency Backgrid, quickly sold his set of photos to other outlets around the world. He snapped even more pictures of the blissful-looking couple that week: kissing in an In-N-Out Burger parking lot in the San Fernando Valley, clutching hands on a lovely afternoon while walking down the street in athleisure.

To clarify: Yes, this is the Hugh Jackman who plays Wolverine, and Sutton Foster, a two-time Tony winning musical-comedy stage star – two attractive and smiley showbiz professionals who, while admired by critics and peers, may seem an unlikely pair to inspire a paparazzi investigation. But lately, they have been caught up in a relationship drama that emerged from an improbably wholesome forum – their 2022 Broadway revival of The Music Man – that has mesmerised the gossip-loving public ever since.

Fans have been looking back on interviews Jackman and Foster did at the time of The Music Man run looking for clues. Credit: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Jackman stunned fans after the show closed, when he and his wife of 27 years, actress Deborra-Lee Furness, said in September 2023 that they were ending one of the entertainment world’s most enduring marriages. In October 2024, Foster and her husband of a decade, screenwriter Ted Griffin, revealed they were splitting up. Finally, about two months later …

“We got the two-shot, the shot that everyone kind of was waiting for,” said Parshotam, whose Jackman-Foster images were published everywhere from American and British tabloids to the covers of Australian newspapers.

“That January made my year,” he added. “Not just financially, but more as a scoop.”

Indeed, the news that Jackman, 56, and Foster, 50, were official lit up theatre group chats, Reddit gossip threads and social media comments across the globe, not to mention a slew of publications that now track their every move.

Hugh Jackman (left) and Deborra-Lee Furness in 2022.Credit: AP

Five months later, the two still have not said a word publicly about their courtship. But their very existence as a couple seems to have hit enough cultural nodes to vault them to near-Bennifer 2.0 status: Hollywood but also Broadway, blockbusters but also niche streaming faves, Australian celebrities, regular celebrities, co-stars falling in love, dating in your 50s, divorcing in your 50s and – perhaps most important – a hint of possible scandal.

The story picked up more steam last month when Furness, 69, confirmed to the Daily Mail that she has now officially filed for divorce from Jackman. She also sent a lengthy and vague-yet-pointed statement, allowing readers to do their own maths.

“My heart and compassion goes out to everyone who has traversed the traumatic journey of betrayal. It’s a profound wound that cuts deep,” Furness told the publication. “However I believe in a higher power and that God/the universe, whatever you relate to as your guidance, is always working FOR us. This belief has helped me navigate the breakdown of an almost three-decade marriage. I have gained much knowledge and wisdom through this experience.”

Representatives for Jackman, Foster and Furness did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

It’s an unusually messy situation for two charming entertainers who have spent years accumulating goodwill, moving seamlessly from musical theatre to film and TV and back again. Jackman was an Academy Award nominee for Les Miserables (he’s got all but the “O” in EGOT - Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards) and is the rare Marvel action hero who can sing and dance. Foster has been nominated for five other Tonys in addition to those two wins, and earned a following among young fans for her work in TV.

But in the game of fame, critical success can’t hold a candle to a juicy real-life love story.

“People are fascinated by Hugh Jackman as an actor, but his love life has always been an even bigger obsession,” said Dax Holt, a former TMZ on-air personality. Holt, who now co-hosts the Hollywood Raw podcast where Parshotam first shared his story of cracking the “JackFost” case, noted the endless curiosity about Jackman and Furness’s marriage: their age gap, the long-running speculation about Jackman’s sexuality – and now intrigue about the estrangement timeline.

“Deborra alluding to him being a cheater has poured more gas on the fire,” Holt said. “I’m not going to lie, it’s been an entertaining topic to cover on the podcast.”

Part of the excitement is that Jackman and Foster have joined a storied tradition of co-stars who wind up dating. Anika Chapin, a musical theatre dramaturge and writer, recalled seeing an Instagram post shortly after news of the new couple broke. “I didn’t realise this happened in theatre,” one commenter replied.

“I was like, ‘Well, of course it happens in theatre’,” Chapin said. In film and television, you shoot a romantic scene a handful of times, she noted, while in theatre, you fall in love onstage eight times a week and spend hours together backstage. “It’s so much more of a concentrated experience that it feels like even more of a breeding ground for potential romantic entanglements.”

Ben Rimalower, a theatre writer, performer and director, said the rumours about Jackman and Foster were so persistent in Broadway circles – a community drawn to drama both onstage and behind the scenes – that the most surprising part about the relationship confirmation was that they were still together. But since Foster in particular is beloved in the theatre world, there seemed to be “a widespread desire” to let her handle whatever was going on at her own discretion, he said.

However, after the news of her marriage ending not long after Jackman’s, the chatter increased to a level that couldn’t be contained to Midtown Manhattan.

Jackman and Furness in 1998.Credit: AP

“Even though they are obviously theatre stars, and that’s where their careers began, they are both clearly famous at the level where they crossed over,” Rimalower said, adding, “It’s just a really far reach that makes them a lot more interesting to people than the average Broadway couple.”

Decades before The Music Man brought them together, Jackman and Foster shared the kind of big-break origin story that theatre kids swoon for. Jackman landed his role as Wolverine in Marvel’s 2000 blockbuster X-Men when Dougray Scott, a bigger name at the time, had to drop out due to Mission: Impossible 2 commitments. Foster was hired to understudy Millie Dillmount during Thoroughly Modern Millie’s slow path to Broadway in 2002, but took over the role when the original lead actress fell out with producers days before its out-of-town opening. Jackman emerged as the breakout star of the X-Men ensemble, while Foster won her first Tony.

Jackman met Furness five years before X-Men on the Australian TV crime drama Correlli. They wed the following year when he was 27 and she was 40. They later adopted a son and a daughter and were often praised for their public devotion to each other. But as Jackman continued to star in musicals between hit movies, speculation about his sexuality was rampant. In a 60 Minutes Australia interview in 2013, he and Furness expressed irritation about rumours that he was clandestinely gay. “If I was, I would be,” Jackman told the reporter. “But I do get frustrated for Deb, cause I see Deb go, ‘Ah, this is just crazy’.”

As Foster went on to success in Broadway shows and basic-cable series – ABC Family’s Bunheads and TVLand’s Younger – she married her Millie co-star Christian Borle, also now a two-time Tony winner, in 2006. They, too, were an object of sotto voce speculation in theatre circles, which Foster addressed in her 2021 memoir Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life – describing how upset she was by tabloid reports of supposed cheating when in fact she and Borle had quietly separated and started seeing other people. (They divorced in 2009.)

Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness in Correlli.

“The gossips tried to sum up our demise as simply and salaciously as they could,” Foster wrote. “But it wasn’t that clear-cut.”

Ultimately, this story of an old-school backstage romance – except involving fifty-somethings! – just proved irresistible for very online gossips, who have found themselves combing through the pair’s now years-old promotional interviews for The Music Man: how much they bonded during pandemic-delayed rehearsals, how naturally their professional chemistry developed. Foster told CBS Mornings in 2022 that she and Jackman made a routine of meeting in her dressing room before every show, sitting on the floor to catch up in what she called “carpet chat”.

“We’re kind of this little pair. And it’s the greatest thing that’s come out of this whole experience, is that I have a new friend,” Foster said. In other interviews, she described how their families spent time together and that her young daughter, whom she adopted with Griffin, called Jackman “Uncle Hugh”.

One of the first hints of scandal came last autumn, not long after Foster confirmed her divorce. Pop culture creator Tasha Lustig posted a video on Instagram to her 227,000 followers where she claimed that Jackman “blindsided” Furness by “running off” with Foster. Amanda de Cadenet, a British media personality and part of Furness’ crowd, showed up in the comments.

“You are on point with this one,” she wrote. “My beloved friend Deb is about to have her glow up any moment fyi!”

Tabloids and gossip magazines took note that Furness herself “liked” Lustig’s video from her private Instagram account. In an interview with The Washington Post, Lustig said that she knew that Furness followed her on Instagram, and she wasn’t too surprised that Furness engaged with the post. Lustig argued that the media all too often reports on celebrity divorce from the man’s point of view, so she seeks to give her audience the counter perspective. Plenty of fans sympathised with Furness.

“People are really fond of Deb,” Lustig said, noting she was Jackman’s “ride or die” for years.

After four months without a recorded public sighting, Jackman and Foster resurfaced in new paparazzi photos in mid-May that showed them on the streets of New York – another People exclusive, this time with the headline, “Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster Show Sweet PDA in Rare New Photos Since Confirming Romance”.

They are positively beaming as they hold hands, not looking directly at the cameras, but with the aura of stars who know that everyone is watching their every move.

The Washington Post

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