How Stokes staged an intervention to save Packer from Mariah
Kerry Stokes has revealed he played a major role in stopping his friend James Packer’s wedding to Mariah Carey | WATCH
Billionaire and Seven Network owner Kerry Stokes has revealed his intervention in James Packer’s life in 2016 when he took control for a time of his friend’s private affairs, including playing a major role in stopping his wedding to pop singer Mariah Carey.
His interventions included putting Mr Packer’s plane in for unscheduled maintenance, incurring the wrath of Carey and her advisers, who at one point accused Mr Stokes of kidnap.
“They were threatening to go to the police for me kidnapping James — there were some strong words,” Mr Stokes says in The Price of Fortune, a new biography of Mr Packer, to be launched today.
Mr Packer reveals being pushed over the edge mentally in mid-February 2016 when his Crown Resorts group received a $362 million bill from the Australian Taxation Office flowing from one of its big US casino investments made before the global financial crisis.
The billionaire says he was already “feeling under enormous pressure and stress” after borrowing more than $500m to conclude a division of the family fortune with his sister, worth more than $1.25 billion. Crown shares had also slumped to their lowest level in two years. But the tax decision was the final straw.
Mr Packer says he was manic and paranoid, plagued by unpredictable mood swings and an inability to manage stress, and was sitting at his home in Aspen when the house phone rang.
“It’s a call I will never forget. It was from a man I once knew who lived in Israel. I thought the world of him.
“He said: ‘Jamie, I’m worried about you. You’re unwell.’ He told me to rely on my friends nearby to tell me what to do next. That was code for [relying on] Kerry Stokes,” he says in the book.
The public got a rare glimpse of the emotional connection between Mr Packer and Mr Stokes when photographs were published of them in a long embrace on the lower deck of Mr Packer’s luxury boat, the Arctic P, as it cruised the Mediterranean at the end of June 2015.
On the deck above was Carey. It was only days after her blossoming romance to Mr Packer had become public.
Eight months later, in February 2016, Mr Stokes, who had been spending the American ski season at his hunting lodge at exclusive Beaver Creek in Vail, Colorado, drove with his wife, Christine, to Mr Packer’s home in Aspen.
There he organised for his friend to travel to Israel for treatment for his condition.
By then, Mr Packer was engaged to Carey and the couple was due to be married on Bora Bora in French Polynesia on March 1.
Mr Stokes says Mr Packer, at the time, was “confused”.
“We agreed it would be good if he spent some time in Israel. Away from all the controversies and the pressures and the intensities ... My concern was that [he and Mariah] were both in bad places and that James needed some space.
“He had friends in Israel who were concerned about his welfare. I felt comfortable he would be looked after there,” Mr Stokes says in the book.
In Israel, Mr Packer says he was diagnosed with a mental health illness and put on powerful medication to help his condition.
“It was really strong. I can’t describe the feeling it gave me but six to eight months later, it was so powerful I could barely function,” he says.
Mr Stokes says he felt Mr Packer and Carey needed time apart because he was concerned both had fallen into the relationship on the rebound from bad break-ups. And he was concerned about their fast-paced lifestyle.
In this vein, he then made a remarkable decision: to take charge for a time of Mr Packer’s personal affairs. “It just needed to be done,” Mr Stokes says.
It was a remarkable move by someone already chairing his own public companies, Seven West Media and Seven Group Holdings.
“With due respect, those around James and those executives (like CPH chief executive Robert Rankin), they accepted I did have authority (to manage James’s personal matters). I made the decisions,” Mr Stokes says.
“It was easy for me to say, ‘No, you are not spending $250,000 on a wedding dress. No, you are not moving this here. You are not doing that.’ ”
Mr Stokes also rearranged CPH’s small internal board of directors. “All I did, in effect, was put in place some controls that made it easier for people there to do their jobs,” Mr Stokes says.
“It was never envisaged previously that James would not be there.”
Mr Rankin, who was not on the CPH board, continued overseeing the business interests of the company.
After Mr Packer’s arrival in Israel, Mr Stokes organised for Mr Packer’s pilots to take his plane in for unscheduled maintenance, angering Carey and her personal assistant and manager Stella Bulochnikov. He stayed there for three weeks.
“They wanted to charter a plane from Las Vegas to Israel, and I wouldn’t approve it. I was accused of separating the lovebirds,” Mr Stokes says.
“I did postpone his wedding. We did have issues at the time because Mariah’s agent was most insistent they would not be separated and the wedding take place ... James was upset at not seeing [Mariah]. But he wasn’t sure. He was obviously engaged to her. He was obviously emotionally involved. The fact it was postponed, he was happy to get the chance to get himself into a better place.”
Mr Packer’s memory of the time is hazy but he recalls: “Mariah was very upset when I was in Israel because I had just disappeared.”
When Mr Packer eventually returned to the US in March to be reunited with his fiancee, Mr Stokes says he had quietly ensured the moment for the wedding had passed.
“James was still reasonably intent on marrying her [after Israel]. But the boat had been moved, the occasion had been cancelled, circumstances had changed. To restart it all was not easy. During that process, [the wedding] all fell apart. In retrospect, that was good for James,” he says.
“James’s welfare was paramount. He needed care at that stage.”
Mr Stokes stresses he had nothing against Carey. In fact, he liked the singer and enjoyed her company.
“I saw Mariah and James together. The times they were together, they seemed truly happy with one another. I just thought it had moved too quickly for James and he was being railroaded. I was more concerned about the influence of her agent, Stella,” he says.
Mr Packer and Mr Stokes had fallen out during the battle for control of pay television in Australia between 2005 and 2008, but they reconciled in September 2009, with the assistance of UBS Australasia chief Matthew Grounds, and resumed their friendship.
“Where I’m most grateful to Kerry is the way he helped both (second wife) Erica and me through my marriage breakdown. And the way that he helped me at the end of 2015,” Mr Packer says.
“At the time I was doing the separation with Gretel. I needed good friends.”
After his diagnosis in Israel, Mr Packer says he was given a similar assessment of his mental health condition by his doctors in the US and Argentina during the rest of 2016.
“I have wrestled with mental health issues at times in my life — depression and anxiety — especially in times of extreme stress,” he says.
“I have big mood swings.”
While Mr Packer’s default demeanour is to be kind and cheerful — he can also be extraordinarily charming — you always sense there is a short fuse lurking underneath, especially when he feels unreasonably crossed.
“When I think someone has f..ked me over, I get really upset. Whether I am right all the time about whether someone did that or didn’t is up for interpretation,” he says.
“People I have fallen out with in my life, they would all think it was my fault. They would think it was precipitated by actions and events on my behalf that were bad and were unreasonable. I look back at those instances and I think they f..ked me over.”
He agrees the incidents are rarely black and white, but are often “grey falling on my side”.
“I think it relates to mood swings and things I say to people when I am angry. My truth is, when people hit me or I feel I’ve been wronged, I punch back ... I think I go ruder and perhaps more personal than others do.”
While Mr Packer now says he feels fine after his treatment in a Boston clinic in March, he says he is still on more prescription drugs than he would like.
“For me, it is an introduction to the American medical system. I feel very dulled, very dulled. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist once a week that I do over FaceTime. Changing my medications is something that my doctors take very seriously,” he says.
“I am not sure I really see a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of getting off the medications I am on. Which sort of reminds me why health is 18 per cent of the US GDP. You get caught on the treadmill.”
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