Christopher McDonald Says He Was ‘Devastated’ When Geena Davis Broke Off Engagement After Falling in Love with Jeff Goldblum

McDonald and Davis later reunited professionally, playing husband and wife in the 1991 film ‘Thelma & Louise’

Christopher McDonald is opening up about feeling “devastated” when Geena Davis ended their engagement to be with Jeff Goldblum in the mid-1980s.

Speaking in a recent career retrospective at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, McDonald, 71, shared that the two later reconciled, even acting onscreen as husband and wife in 1991’s Thelma & Louise.

“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 shared. “And I don’t blame him. She’s stunningly beautiful and everything like that, but you know, what happens on sets — things sometimes happen.”

He added: “But I was broken.”

“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 added. “So I got the bad news from Ed Begley. He did me that solid.”

He continued: “I mean I was really, really devastated.”

After meeting on the set of the 1985 film Transylvania 6-5000, Davis and Goldblum married in November 1987 and divorced in 1990.

But as fate would have it, Davis and McDonald would reconnect later when Davis, now 70, starred in buddy crime drama Thelma & Louise alongside Susan Sarandon.

McDonald went on to marry actress Lupe Gidley in 1992. The pair share four children.

Recounted McDonald: “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!’ ”

In a 1992 interview with the Los Angeles Times, McDonald called the experience of working with Davis “great” and “really cathartic.”

Via: People