Christopher McDonald admitted he was absolutely devastated when Geena Davis famously left him for Jeff Goldblum.
The actor, 71, made the rare comments on his 1985 split from Davis, 70, in a sit-down with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation Saturday talking about his legendary career.
“Geena Davis and I were engaged to be married for about five weeks and she fell in love with Jeff Goldblum doing her first movie over there in Europe,” McDonald said with a laugh.
“And I don’t blame him,” he added. “She’s stunningly beautiful and everything like that, but you know, what happens on sets — things sometimes happen.”
“But, I was broken,” he recalled.
The movie McDonald is referring to is the 1985 comedy “Transylvania 6-5000,” in which Davis and Goldblum co-starred in alongside Ed Begley Jr. McDonald said Begley Jr. was the one to tell him his engagement was off.
“I was doing ‘Hamlet’ at the time, playing Laertes, and I had another three weeks to finish and then I was going to go over and join her,” McDonald shared. “So I got the bad news from Ed Begley. He did me that solid.”
“I mean I was really, really devastated,” he continued.
But McDonald did work with Davis again in 1991’s “Thelma & Louise,” in which he played her husband. He explained that it was the only job that was available to him at the time, and humorously recounted how his casting was also a shock to Davis.
“It’s literally five years later and [Davis] said to [director Ridley Scott], ‘Who’d you get to play my husband?’ and he said, ‘Oh, you’ll love him, he’s tall, he’s funny, uh … what’s his name? Chris McDonald,’ and then she said, ‘I used to go with him,’ and he said, ‘Even better, perfect!’”
McDonald said he awkwardly asked her to go to lunch the next day and that he and his ex-fiancée “hugged it out.”
Davis and Goldblum did end up getting married in 1987, but she filed for divorce three years later.
The actress has been married four times — aside from Goldblum, she was married to restauranteur Richard Emmolo from 1981 to 1984, director Renny Harlin from 1993 to 1998, and pediatric plastic surgeon Dr. Reza Jarrahy from 2001 to 2017.
She and Jarrahy share three children together.
As for McDonald, he married actress Lupe Gidley in 1992, and they share four kids together.