For an announcement of a relationship split, it was certainly was an unorthodox one.
Dressed in full tennis attire at a fancy dress party, Isla Fisher stunned her fans with the bombshell news that she and husband Sacha Baron Cohen had decided to end their marriage after 20 years together.
It was the same picture they’d used to mark their anniversary just a year before.
‘After a long tennis match lasting over 20 years, we are putting our racquets down’, she wrote in April last year. ‘In 2023 we jointly filed to end our marriage. We have always prioritised our privacy and have been quietly working through this change.
‘We forever share in our devotion and love for our children. We sincerely appreciate your respecting our family’s wish for privacy.’
While the announcement came as a shock to the couple’s fans, it had been an open secret among their friends for more than a year. During this time their PR machine had shut down numerous journalists wanting to run the story, insisting it was not true.
When they eventually shared their news with the world, they insisted there was no animosity.
The timing of the announcement came just days after Australian actress Rebel Wilson had claimed, in an explosive autobiography, that the Borat and Ali G star had sexually harassed her when they worked together on his poorly received 2016 comedy, The Brothers Grimsby, and that he had then attempted to block her memoir from being published – claims he vehemently denied.
Isla Fisher and husband Sacha Baron Cohen have decided to end their marriage after 20 years together
Now, nine months on, I can reveal that relations between Sacha and Isla are no longer ‘Love All’. In fact, a source close to the actor say ‘it’s war’ and that ‘any remaining veneer of civility has gone’.
Behind the scenes, sources say the divorce is gearing up to become nasty as the couple’s £60 million fortune – including several properties – is divided up.
Insiders predict that, despite divorce proceedings beginning in 2023, they are not expected to be finalised until much later this year.
Last weekend things became even worse between the pair, when Isla, 49, appeared to break ranks on their usual agreement not to discuss their private lives. She spoke to a Sunday supplement magazine to promote the latest Bridget Jones movie, in which she stars as Rebecca, next-door neighbour to Renee Zellweger’s iconic character.
‘The women in my life have held me,’ she gushed. ‘The female relationships that I cultivated in our business, those women have been there for me. I’m actually going to get emotional.
‘I’m sitting here today because of them. I’ve learnt so much about the power of female friendship and I’ve just learnt that I do have resilience, who I am outside of a partnership, and what my values are. It has been this expansive learning curve.’
When Sacha learned of the interview, he hit the roof, I’m told. He interpreted the comments as a clear dig at him – and also making clear where her loyalties lie.
‘This comment left Sacha furious,’ said a friend of his.
‘It felt like a blatant statement that she was on side with Rebel, the whole women sticking together thing was obvious and that is what he drew from the situation and it has made him very cross and upset.
‘Sacha was fuming when he read that, he felt utterly betrayed.’ In fact, sources say Rebel’s claims about him were ‘very much’ at the heart of their relationship breakdown – with embarrassed Isla moving to distance herself from her spouse of 15 years.
‘It might have been thinly veiled but it was enough to upset Sacha a lot, Isla very much appeared to be setting her stall out,’ said the friend. ‘There may have been some issues before, but the allegations about how he made Rebel feel were a major factor – and it appears she wants anyone in the industry who will listen to know how she feels.
The film star couple announce their separation to the world in a statement on Instagram
‘They have always been very private people so Isla speaking out was a massive shock to him, and a clear sign she isn’t going to be the doting wife anymore.’
Rebel’s claims were certainly shocking – and embarrassing. She’d said that while filming sex scenes between their two characters, Sacha, 53, had requested she ‘stick her finger up his a***’ because he thought it would make a funny moment in the film. She claimed ‘it felt like [he] had sexually harassed me’.
The 44-year-old, who’d made her name as a plus-size comedy actress, alleged she’d felt ‘completely disrespected, which led to me treating myself with even more disrespect by eating in an extremely unhealthy way’.
She also claimed Sacha had asked her to strip for scenes, despite her ‘no nudity’ rule.
Sacha insisted the intimate moments were all consensual and part of the pre-approved script.
In a statement, he said: ‘While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage, and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of The Brothers Grimsby.’
His attempts to keep the claims out of her autobiography – Rebel Rising – failed, however.
Reports suggesting the timing of Sacha and Isla’s divorce announcement was linked to the scandalous claims were shot down by Sacha – who insisted they had separated long before Rebel’s book was published.
Perhaps Isla could be forgiven for wanting to try to distance herself from the whole tawdry matter, though.
Isla and Sacha, who married in 2010, were once a much-loved celebrity couple, and had always shied away from talking about their relationship.
In fact, they had an unwritten rule that they wouldn’t discuss it for the sake of their three children – now aged 17, 14 and nine.
Sacha with Australian actress Rebel Wilson in The Brothers Grimsby. Rebel claims Sacha had sexually harassed her when they worked together on his poorly received 2016 comedy
So Sacha, say friends, is stunned that she’s decided to do so now, albeit in a cryptic way. ‘They’re co-parenting the children and for both they are the priority,’ said a source close to Sacha.
‘The last thing that Sacha would want to do is make things any more difficult than they already are for them, so is miffed she has spoken out.’
Friends also suspect that the risqué shoot that Isla did alongside the interview in the Sunday Times Style magazine was a factor in Sacha’s anger. The Australian star stunned in a tiny black playsuit and Christian Louboutin stiletto heels under the headline: The Reinvention of Isla Fisher.
‘There was absolutely no doubt the whole thing was a sign that Isla had moved on and she wants everyone to know,’ said the insider. ‘She is now no longer
Mrs Sacha Baron Cohen, she’s Isla Fisher.
And with her about to turn 50, it is hardly surprising that she wants to start again.’
Isla and Sacha first met in 2001 at a party in Sydney where he says they ‘bonded over taking the mickey out of others’ at the bash which he says was ‘pretentious’.
Their union was a surprise one for their fans.
Isla, born in Muscat, the capital of Oman, to Scottish parents, but who grew up in Perth, Australia was best known for her role as school girl Shannon Reed in the Sydney-based Australian soap, Home and Away. She went on to star in rom com movie, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and then alongside Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers.
Sacha, meanwhile, was born into a strict Jewish family and educated at the £30,000-a-year Haberdashers’ Aske’s boys school in Hertfordshire before studying history with a focus on anti-semitism at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
He shot to fame in 1998 courtesy of his satirical ‘gangsta’ character Ali G, who appeared on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show.
He went on to create the Kazakh journalist character, Borat, followed by another alter-ego, a flamboyant Austrian television presenter named Bruno.
Having got engaged in 2004, in 2007, Isla converted to Judaism to prepare for their wedding, and the same year, their eldest daughter was born.
Their wedding in Paris in March 2010 was an intimate affair, with only a small number of guests. They used the ruse that it was Sacha’s father’s 70th birthday to throw journalists off the scent.
Isla gave birth to their second daughter later that year and, in 2015, they had a baby boy. In the meantime they were building up a vast property portfolio including a multi-million pound mansion in Los Angeles.
But in 2020 they moved from America to Sydney. Then, the following year, to escape Sydney’s strict Covid lockdown rules, they moved to Perth on Australia’s West coast, where Isla’s family live.
At the time, they said the move to Perth would be permanent and the family still have a home there. However, their move to Australia was said to be ‘difficult’ for Sacha because he was settled in Hollywood – and it was a shorter flight home to London.
He was said to be the main driver behind the family’s move back to the UK where, in 2023, they were seen house-hunting together in North London.
It is understood the couple settled in the upmarket enclave of Hampstead – ironically, where the new Bridget Jones film is set – though Sacha is now thought to have left the family home.
Now, like her on-screen neighbour, Isla is reinventing herself as a newly-single mum.
She has taken to Instagram to share snaps of her glamorous new life, enjoying girls’ nights out with close friends and fellow actors Naomi Watts and Michelle Dockery.
And she wowed in a red frock at the Bridget Jones premiere in London last month.
She has also been in the US, promoting the cartoon movie Dogman, in which she voices the character Sarah Hatoff, alongside American comedian Pete Davidson. And last autumn she jetted to Paris for the city’s fashion week.
How long ago that bizarre tennis picture now seems.
At the time she first posted it, to mark their anniversary in 2022, Isla wrote: ‘If ever there comes a day when we can’t be together keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.’
‘Things have most certainly changed,’ said the friend. They have indeed – for everyone.
