LIKE a drama straight from the big screen, Thandiwe Newton’s glittering career and marriage seem to have imploded at once.
Friends are so concerned about the Line Of Duty star’s mental health that they have reportedly urged her to seek urgent help.
The first shock came last week, when the Bafta-winning actress was allegedly sacked while filming the new Magic Mike movie after a heated row with its producer and lead actor, Channing Tatum, 41.
It was quickly followed by reports that the 49-year-old actress had split from British screenwriter Ol Parker after 24 years of marriage.
In the days before she exited the third instalment of the male stripper film, insiders claimed Thandiwe had been “acting strange on set” and was “always ranting and raving”.
She reportedly kept her two pet rabbits in her London hotel room “for emotional support” and fired her British-based agent, who she had worked with for three decades.
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Thandiwe broke her silence yesterday, posting on social media a picture of vintage underwear with the words: “Do we hate our women.”
It has left fans wondering what could have instigated the shocking sequence of events just two years after the Mission: Impossible 2 actress was awarded an OBE.
Recent interviews point to a troubled soul. The mum of three, who is half British and half Zimbabwean, has told how she suffered a “number of breakdowns” after facing both sexual abuse and racism throughout her life.
Thandiwe, who reverted to the African spelling of her name last year after previously going by Thandie, was 16 when she was groomed by a 39-year-old film director.
In her early twenties, she feared she would die after bulimia — the eating disorder Thandiwe had first battled as a teen — reared its ugly head following work pressures and an abusive relationship.
After her award-winning turn in 2004’s Crash, Thandiwe says her audition for Bond movie Casino Royale two years later was scuppered by “stuff going on in my life”.
And prior to being cast in the hit sci-fi TV series Westworld, for which she won an Emmy Award in 2018, Thandiwe had even considered retiring from acting, saying she was not making a “contribution to the world”.
Having been mistreated early in her career, she now refuses to remain silent about the industry’s very disturbing practices.
They include a director allegedly misleading her about the use of topless images taken during an audition and a studio boss telling Thandiwe to dumb down a black character to make her “more convincing”. She turned down the film role as a result.
Now it seems the turmoil has taken its toll.
An insider told The New York Post newspaper: “Thandiwe’s team want her to go to rehab for mental health support. She was supposed to leave immediately for a facility.
“They tried for a Malibu rehab, but they couldn’t take her. Arrangements are now being made to go to a facility in Arizona, if she agrees.”
Thandiwe’s team want her to go to rehab for mental health support.
An insider
Born in London to Nyasha, a Zimbabwean princess of the Shona tribe, and British lab technician Nick, Thandiwe has struggled with her identity and showbusiness.
Her parents lived in Zambia until she was three, when political unrest forced the family to return to the UK. They set up home in Cornwall. At her Catholic primary school, nuns banned Thandiwe from the class photo for having cornrows in her hair and, despite being a star student, she never received an award from her dance teacher unlike other, less talented, classmates.
Even tougher was her experience of the movie business as a child star. She once told The Sun: “I had a very tough time being a teenager in the film business. It’s not a place for young people unless you have your mum standing by you the whole time, and that isn’t possible.”
Thandiwe has alleged she was groomed by Australian director John Duigan, who was 23 years older than her, while making her first movie, Flirting. During the first Covid lockdown she told one journalist: “What happened for me was I had a very complicated relationship with sexual relationships.
“It was like I had to give something back for being noticed. You get predators and sexual abusers, they can smell it a mile off.”
And she has learned that the casting director who filmed up her skirt and instructed Thandiwe to touch her breasts during an audition had shared the tape with his friends. She links her mistreatment during her youth to her eating disorder, saying it made her “want to disappear”.
Last year the actress told Vogue magazine: “(In 1996) I was lying in bed, so thin, and my heart was beating against my ribcage so hard that I could see it, and my friend Jessica called. I said, ‘Jessica, I’m worried I’m going to die’.”
Thandiwe was persuaded to seek help and she went into therapy.
Despite turning to Buddhism and learning techniques for coping with her anxieties, the scars from the past never truly healed.
She told Vulture online magazine: “I’ve had a number of breakdowns, I guess. I remember going to the audition for the new Bond movie, the first one with Daniel Craig.
“I’d just done Crash and yes, I was really hot, and it was my moment. And I remember going into that audition and I was so thin and so messed up.”
Despite being the favourite to become a Bond girl, she missed out on the part. Other hit films were passed up because Thandiwe was not happy with them. One was 2000’s Charlie’s Angels due to racial stereotyping.
While most stars are too scared to publicly name studio bosses, she claimed Sony pictures chairperson Amy Pascal told her the black character wasn’t “believable” because “as written, she’s been to university and is educated”.
And dealing with the “really stressed” Tom Cruise on Mission: Impossible 2 the same year meant Thandiwe did not return for the third instalment of the franchise.
That tension with a co-star appears to have struck again, this time on Magic Mike 3. A source told The Sun that a row with Channing about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards last month became so heated that Thandiwe had to leave the film.
The crew member claimed: “They fell out over the debacle at the Oscars. It was a tense exchange of words but suddenly it escalated — Channing got into this car and he disappeared.” Salma Hayek, 55, has now taken over the part, which will require several days of reshooting.
Her apparent breakdown caused so much disruption, it became clear she couldn’t do the role.
A source
The film studio has since said Thandiwe had decided to “step away” to “deal with family matters”.
Those matters seem to be of the utmost importance. Thandiwe and Ol’s relationship was considered one of the most solid in showbusiness.
They met in 1997 on TV movie In Your Dreams, which Ol wrote, and married a year later. She has said: “He was on set every day and I fell madly in love with him.” Ol, who also wrote for Grange Hill and directed 2018’s Mama Mia! Here We Go Again, tends to stay out of the spotlight.
The couple have three children, daughters Ripley, 21, and Dumbo star Nico, 17, and son Booker, eight.
Thandiwe has spoken of putting her children and husband before her own career. She said: “I married him and I value that more than I value becoming a star.”
The couple have not been seen together publicly since the summer of 2020. Thandiwe has told how she left the set of movie God’s Country in Montana, US, when the pandemic started to isolate with her family at their North London home. But Ol was spotted alone outside their £1.5million house this week without his wedding ring.
Leaving a big movie like Magic Mike after several days of filming is highly unusual — and costly. As of last night, Channing was yet to make a comment on the pair’s alleged fallout.
A source claimed in The New York Post: “Thandiwe had been acting strange on set. She has been very highly strung.
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“Her apparent breakdown caused so much disruption, it became clear she couldn’t do the role. There is a lot going on in her personal life.”
Fans and friends will be hoping Thandiwe can conquer her demons, just as she has done in the past.
