Thandiwe Newton grew closer to a young musician after her marriage fell apart, multiple sources told the Post.
The stunning actress made headlines when she shockedly walked out of the new ‘Magic Mike’ sequel in London last week for ‘personal issues’, and friends are urging her to go to rehab.
A report that she was fired after a falling out with co-star and producer Channing Tatum has been denied by reps, but her role was taken over by Salma Hayek.
As Page Six first revealed, sources have confirmed that Newton, 49, has been struggling with personal issues amid the breakdown of her 24-year marriage to writer and director Ol Parker, 52.
Multiple sources told the Post that Newton had a close friendship with Los Angeles musician Elijah Dias, who goes by the name Lonr.
At 23, Dias, a native of Milford, Mass., is only two years older than Newton’s oldest daughter, Ripley. His song with singer Amber Mark, “Save My Love,” appears in the trailer and on the soundtrack for Newton’s 2021 film “Reminiscence.”
“From the relatively short time I had the chance to spend with her, I know that Thandiwe and Oliver care deeply about the well-being of their children,” Lonr said. says La Poste. “That’s all I care about right now.”
Newton’s rep did not return requests for comment.
A Hollywood insider told Page Six that Newton behaved “erratically” on the set of “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” alleging, “Thandiwe acted strangely on set…enough that the producers worried about his state of mind.
“She didn’t look well at all, and there were fears for her sanity.”
A spokesperson for Warner Bros. Pictures said, “Thandiwe Newton has made the difficult decision to step away from Warner Bros.’ production of ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’. Pictures to take care of family affairs.
The insider said the actress’ team was also concerned after Newton commented on an April 3 Instagram post from her pal Kristen McMenamy, which showed the model with a gun to her face. Newton commented, “Yeah all day.”
Newton’s relatives reportedly wanted her to leave for treatment immediately after leaving “Magic Mike” and suggested the Meadows in Arizona. But Newton wanted to stay in London because Dias was visiting, the insider claimed.
“The Thandiwe team wants her to go to rehab for mental health support,” the insider added.
Newton and Parker, whose credits include directing “Mama Mia!” of 2018! Here We Go Again,” have not been seen together in public since attending the “Westworld” Season 3 premiere in Hollywood in March 2020; Newton played brothel robot Madame Maeve Millay on the HBO show.
The actress has since gone solo for the premieres of “Reminiscence” and the 2023 film “All the Old Knives.”
The couple, who married in 1998, share daughters Ripley, 21, a writer; Nico, a 17-year-old actress; and her 8-year-old son Booker. The family owns a $2 million home in London’s Primrose Hill area.
They are not believed to have filed for divorce, although a London showbiz source said: ‘I know Thandiwe and Ol have been fighting for a while. Ol’s stage is more frequented by Brits and other writers like Richard Curtis [‘Notting Hill,’ ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’]. He has a quiet life.
Parker was photographed without his wedding ring on Tuesday in London.
Another source close to the situation confirmed that Thandiwe had fired her British agent of three decades, Sally Long-Innes, from London-based agency Independent Talent Group. His US agent, Gaby Morgerman, reportedly flew to the UK to try to calm things down.
Long-Innes confirmed to Page Six that she no longer works with Newton.
Newton is not yet believed to be in a treatment center and was still active on Instagram Monday night, posting a since-deleted photo of designer Zoe Buckman’s white dress.
It featured the embroidered phrase “Do we hate our wives” – a reference to the lyrics of Tupac Shakur’s “Keep Ya Head Up”: “I wonder why we take from our wives. Why do we rape our wives, hate our women ?
In a May 2021 British Vogue cover story, Newton made it clear she was no longer playing the Hollywood game.
The star, born Melanie Thandiwe Newton, has revealed she is changing her screen name from Thandie to Thandiwe, which means “beloved” in Zulu. It was originally changed by a misspelling in the credits of her debut film, 1991’s “Flirting,” and remained. Her mother, Nyasha, is a Zimbabwean princess and healthcare worker, and her father, Nick, is a lab technician from Cornwall, England.
“It’s my name. It’s always been my name. I’m taking back what’s mine,” she told the magazine.
Thandiwe has also spoken openly about the abuse she suffered as a young actress, dating her “Flirting” director John Duigan when she was just 16 and he was 39.
“If passersby asked with their eyes what this older man was doing with this young girl, he would tell her they were being racist towards her and she believed him,” Vogue reported.
“It was a textbook, a really boring textbook,” Newton told the magazine.
At 20, Newton left the relationship and studied anthropology at Cambridge University, but made two more films with Duigan out of shame and guilt at having “abandoned” him, the actress said. She added: “He completely derailed me from myself. I was traumatized. It was some kind of PTSD for sure.
Newton told W how, when she was 18, “A director, on an encore, had a camera filming my skirt and asked me to touch my boobs and think about the guy who was making love to me in the scene. Later, Newton said, a producer told him how the director had shown the tape to friends.
She also developed an eating disorder, telling Vogue it nearly killed her.
One evening, just before filming ‘Gridlock’d’ in 1996, she told Vogue: “I was lying in bed, so skinny, and my heart was beating so hard against my rib cage that I could see it, and my friend Jessica called in. I said, ‘Jessica, I’m scared to die.’ And that was it. I suddenly realized that there was something very, very dangerous and dark inside. She said, ‘You have to go talk to someone.’ »
The actress revealed that she has undergone therapy, including the Hoffman Process, which aims to help participants “unlearn” negative behaviors.
Over the years, she reportedly lost roles due to her refusal to play racial and gender stereotypes, such as 2000s “Charlie’s Angels.” Newton quit, she said, after being narrated by Sony Studio Manager Amy Pascal, “‘Maybe there could be a scene where you’re in a bar and she gets up on a table and starts shaking her booty.’ She basically gets rid of those stereotypes about how to be more compelling as a black character.
Pascal said she didn’t remember, but Newton was replaced by Lucy Liu. After the release of “Beloved”, a South African journalist from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association asked the actress, “Do you want to sign my magazine in African?” and that made him put off the organization, which organizes the Golden Globes, for years.
In February, Newton came under fire for an interview with Sky News to promote the film ‘God’s Country’ in which she burst into tears as she apologized to ‘darker-skinned actresses’ for ‘having took their roles.
Her Hollywood experiences made her not only protective of herself, but also of her children. His daughter Nico has previously played lead roles in ‘Dumbo’ and ‘The Third Day’ and filmed HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’.
“I went to every photoshoot with her,” Newton said. “If there was a problem with the photographer, if there was inappropriate language, I was on it, I didn’t care what anyone thought. When it was time for her to find an agent, I spent a month auditioning for one, even though I knew half of them.
His eldest, Ripley, has just been commissioned by Netflix for the semi-autobiographical series “Fuck It Bucket”, which could lift the veil on family life.