His white Audi pulls up to the front steps of the courthouse in Reno, Nevada. For a long time, celebrities came to divorce there out of sight, from Lana Turner to Orson Welles, the author of “Citizen Kane”. In heavy silence, Rupert Murdoch, 93, life-size Citizen Kane, arrives holding the hand of Elena Zhukova, 67, the ex-mother-in-law of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovitch. Three months earlier, they were married at the “Moraga”, a Tuscan-style palace with vineyards in Bel Air, above Los Angeles.
If Murdoch is here on this morning of September 16, it is not to leave his fifth wife. But to defend his press group against his children James, Elisabeth and Prudence, who arrived just before him in a procession of black Cadillac SUVs. The patriarch fears that these three will gang up against his eldest son and designated successor, Lachlan, who accompanies him also holding the hand of his partner, Sarah, a former platinum blonde top model. A scene that even the writers of the series “Succession” would not have thought of.
It all started on June 8, 1999, with a divorce, precisely, between Rupert and Anna, married for more than thirty years. “I thought everything was going well in my marriage, obviously that was not the case,” confided the divorced wife three years later. Rupert behaved very badly towards me. » At 66, the papivore fell head over heels for Wendi Deng, 30, one of his employees with fierce ambition, who “gave him back some energy”, he boasted on CNN. Her children, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, are desperate. They adore their mother who repays them by already preparing an inheritance which she knows will “pose problems”.
Because, she said in 2002, “from their earliest childhood, they were subjected to enormous pressure that they did not deserve.” Anna thus swore to herself that the future children of Rupert and Wendi would never have a say in the empire where she began working at the age of 18, and of which she was an administrator before being forced to upon resignation. After months of tough negotiations, a compromise was signed: upon the death of their father, each of the three children of the ex-couple – to which is added the discreet Prudence born from a previous marriage – will have a right voting within the family holding company. The fate of the group will be decided by these four, equally. And by no one else. Grace and Chloë, the two daughters that Rupert will have with Wendi, will have no power and will be “content” with their share of inheritance of their father's immense fortune (20.8 billion dollars according to Forbes). To this “irrevocable” pact, Rupert still added a small clause. It stipulates that the statutes – therefore the voting rights – of the holding company can be amended “if it is in the interest of all”.
Rupert never stopped pitting his children against each other
Anna thinks she is defending the interests of the heirs. The opposite happens. Throughout his life, Rupert will constantly pit his children against each other. Like Roy Logan in “Succession”, which would have been partly inspired by Lachlan’s confidences, Rupert Murdoch is rather “old school”. He was raised the hard way in a Spartan college in Australia: his father, the very authoritarian Sir Keith, knighted by King George V in 1933, ran one of the country's largest newspapers, the “Melbourne Herald”, before buying a small local duck, the “Adelaide News”. When he died in 1952, Rupert inherited it. He is 22 years old and will use it as a launching pad. This libertarian at heart was left-wing in his early youth, even having a bust of Lenin in his bedroom, but he has already moved to the right, with a pronounced taste for the tabloids, which he successfully bought.
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After Australia, Great Britain where Murdoch buys both the “Sun”, a popular daily with a circulation of millions, and the very chic “Times”. Same strategy in America, where he first acquired the “New York Post” (whose “Page Six” was teeming with gossip about the city’s high society) then the august “Wall Street Journal”, the business bible. In 1996, he revolutionized cable television by launching Fox News, the right-wing channel which posed as an alternative to CNN. He hires Roger Ailes, Richard Nixon's brilliant communicator, who repeats: “It's not enough for conservatives to love us, it's also necessary for progressives to hate us.” » The formula, Trumpian before its time, was a hit: Fox News became the country's leading news channel and Rupert Murdoch, one of the most powerful men in America.
Elisabeth would be the best suited to take over
In the opinion of many observers, his daughter Elisabeth, born in 1968, is the best suited to take over. She is the blonde version of Shiobhan, the redhead from “Succession” who she physically resembles, but who appears finer and more intelligent. In 2000, she left the group to successfully found her own production company, Shine Ltd. Even though her father adores her, she quickly realized that she had no chance. Her flaw: being a woman. For Murdoch, this is unacceptable. Not that he's a Trump-like alpha male, no. When he speaks, he swallows his words, ends his sentences with silences which force his anguished colleagues to decipher. “If you put him alone in an elevator with a pretty girl, he will feel uncomfortable,” notes Michael Wolff, a knowledgeable “murdochologist,” in his bestseller “The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch dynasty”, (not translated). In reality, Rupert loves strong women. Like Anna, who, by her own admission, “can be bossy”, Wendi (a dragon), Jerry Hall (a top model long married to Mick Jagger), or currently Elena (a retired nuclear biologist who, unlike the two previous wives, is rather appreciated by the family). But with Murdoch, the so-called weaker sex has a role to play. His mother, the very worldly Dame Elisabeth, was a cocktail fan. He does not see his daughter, as intelligent as she is, taking over from him, especially since she has another major problem: she happened to vote on the left like her ex-husband Matthew Freud, descendant of Sigmund and communicator star of the Labor Party in Britain during the Tony Blair years.
James is the cursed heir of the family
A flaw which also cost James, the youngest son born in 1972, dearly. He is the Kendall Roy of the family. The cursed heir who speaks the trendy language of high tech. As a young man, he got tattoos, dyed his hair blonde and started a hip-hop label. James will finally fall in line to become one of the leaders of the group. In 2009, during a conference that remains famous, he attacked the BBC, in a very Murdochian way, accusing it of receiving public subsidies to disseminate a left-wing ideology. Alas, in 2011, he was swept up in the wiretapping scandal of the sleuths of the “News of the World”, a Sunday tabloid of the group, who had gotten into the habit of illegally penetrating the mailboxes of their targets. The son and father find themselves before a parliamentary commission of inquiry. “The most humiliating moment of my life,” says Rupert. Whose person responsible would be… James, according to his sister Elisabeth, who is calling for his head. To get back in the race? She denies it. “We are a normal, united family,” she then evades. Where, as in the series, anything goes.
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch in 2018.
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Exit James. His father exiled him to the United States. And begs the eldest, Lachlan, born in 1971, to come back. This one doesn't really have an equivalent in “Succession”. Like Roman, the crazy son who sends sexts to the group's legal director, he has a reputation as a dilettante, but in reality, he is the polar opposite. Lachlan is athletic, handsome like a Hollywood actor, a lover of rock climbing… and right-wing! Why didn't his father think of it sooner? Because Lachlan also has his character. In 2005, he clashed with the very shady Roger Ailes, who brings in billions at Fox News. Obviously his father didn't support him. So Lachlan slammed the door for Australia, which he loves and where he grew up. Return to the group in 2015. This time, it's the right one: everyone sees him as the dolphin. Starting with James who reconnected with the leftist tendencies of his youth: he left the group in 2019 then the board of directors in 2020, in “disagreement”, he said, with the editorial line of Fox News. The two brothers no longer speak to each other.
Health problems
Rupert accumulates health problems. A bad fall aboard Lachlan's carbon fiber yacht “Sarissa” nearly leaves him paralyzed. He suffered from a long Covid in 2020 and is one of the first in the world to benefit from the vaccine while his channel gives voice to “experts” who minimize the pandemic. He still has his wits about him… like Joe Biden. “Today he is a man of his age, with his good days and his bad days,” says Michael Wolff. In September 2023, he finally dubbed Lachlan, promoted to “chairman” of Fox Corporation and News Corp, the two entities of the group. End of the saga? No ! There remains this damn pact made with his ex-wife Anna in 1999… At the end of 2023, Murdoch tries to convince James, Elisabeth and Prudence to cede their right to vote to their brother, “in their interest”. It is poorly received. And he knows that upon his death, the three “rebels”, who share the same lawyer, risk uniting against his heir apparent. By three votes to one, they can then put him in the minority within the family holding company. And that will be the end of the empire, which risks being dismantled, or even worse: refocused on a less right-wing positioning with regard to Fox News. What Rupert Murdoch does not want at any cost.
In mid-September, he arrived with his designated heir at the Reno courthouse, which specializes in this type of ultra-sensitive case. Final last stand of an emperor who wants to continue to lay down the law from beyond? The Nevada courts were not fooled, rejecting, according to the document cited by the “New York Times”, “a charade”.
The judgment also referred to a “poker game” and a “bluff”. Rupert Murdoch only had an Ace in his hand. He will need new cards for the next battle.
