Just when you think Rupert Murdoch has finally certified a successor, the Murdochs reach yet another stalemate. It’s almost like they got renewed for another season and have to keep the plot going.
Except now someone is speaking out from the inside. In a tell-all interview with The Atlantic, James Murdoch, the second-eldest of the three children Rupert Murdoch shares with former journalist Anna dePeyster, gave a rare insight into the war at the heart of the family. In the interview, he declares his father a “misogynist” and “f***ing twisted”.
This comes amidst the ongoing succession battle between Lachlan (the eldest son of Murdoch’s trio of children with dePeyster and Murdoch’s chosen successor) and his adult siblings James, Elisabeth and Prudence (the daughter of Rupert’s first marriage with Patricia Booker).
The current Murdoch family drama has been rather hilariously kickstarted by the season four plotline of the HBO show Succession, where the family patriarch dies and his children must decide who gains control of his company.
Most recently, Rupert Murdoch tried to utilise the “highly secretive” jurisdiction of Nevada, where the family trust is registered, to amend the trust and give Lachlan super-voting shares so his succession could not be challenged.
Lachlan’s adult siblings were aghast at the attempt to legally cement Lachlan as successor. However, in December, Rupert and Lachlan lost. They are appealing this decision to the Nevada Supreme Court. But legal experts feel that Gorman’s verdict is unlikely to be overturned, leaving the family at a stalemate.
According to The Atlantic piece, James Murdoch has been particularly rocked by the lawsuit. Not least because he was the only serious contender against Lachlan. Rupert’s daughters apparently never stood a chance, something James explains simply in The Atlantic interview: “He is a misogynist.”
In the piece, he explains his hatred for Fox News (“If lying to your audience is how you juice ratings [...] a good culture wouldn’t do that,”) and his incredulity at his own family for not seeing how cliched and Shakespearan their drama is (“It’s all been written down many, many times,” he says, “The real tragedy is that no one in my family doing this bothered to pay attention,”).
He also outlines how his father appeared to “make good” with him via a note on a delivery of legal documents. “Dear James, Still time to talk? Love, Dad. P.S: Love to see my grandchildren one day,” the note read. But James couldn’t remember the last time Rupert had taken any interest in his grandchildren, so he didn’t bother to reply.
James also describes a gruelling deposition in the Reno court battle, during which he was asked things like “Have you ever done anything successful on your own?” and told that he and his siblings were “white, privileged, multibillionaire trust-fund babies.”
According to The Atlantic piece, James eventually realised that these questions were coming directly from Rupert, who was sitting silently and texting the questions to the lawyer. “How fucking twisted is that?” James says.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rupert and Lachlan described James’ claims in the interview as a “litany of falsehoods [...] from someone who no longer works for the companies but still benefits from them financially.” A spokesperson for Lachlan denied James’s version of events numerous times throughout The Atlantic piece.
James also comments on the Succession comparisons, which the Murdoch clan found so scarily close to real life that they believed someone was leaking information to the writers. “I think there’s a bit of psychodrama around this sort of thing,” James told The Atlantic. Later it became apparent that Elisabeth’s ex-husband had indeed offered his services to Succession writer Jesse Armstrong, but was declined.
James also alleges that leaks from the Murdoch camp were not uncommon, having apparently discovered that stories painting himself as a “liberal dilettante” and his wife as a “meddling” former model were coming from inside the house. “The revelation was liberating,” interviewer McKay Coppins writes.
Kathryn Murdoch, James’s philanthropist wife, is also interviewed as part of The Atlantic piece and provides insightful peeks into what it is like to join the Murdoch family as an outsider. The first time she met Rupert Murdoch, Kathryn recalls, she saw him cheating during a family game of Monopoly.
In another memory, she describes sparring with Rupert Murdoch over gay marriage rights. She claims that Murdoch called gay marriage “an affront to the institution,” to which she said, “Some people would say the same thing about divorce.” By then, Rupert had married his third wife, Wendi Deng. He is now on wife number five.
James also recalls another parallel with Succession in which the family are invited to a family counselling retreat so they can understand how to better “behave with each other.” When interviewer McKay Coppins asks if this retreat was more business or personal, James replies: “There’s no difference in this family.” Meanwhile, Kathryn notes: “I think that the shrink was outmatched.”
For Kathryn and James, a breaking point came in 2017, following the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. James wanted to speak out against it but feared Rupert’s wrath. Kathryn recalls telling James: “If you’re not going to stand up against Nazis, who are you going to stand up against?” In his own statement, James Murdoch wrote: “I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis.” He and Kathryn also donated $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League.
In another insight into the Murdoch empire, it is revealed that the plans surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s eventual demise have been nicknamed “Project Bridge,” after the protocols developed for Queen Elizabeth II’s death (which carried the code name “London Bridge has fallen”).
Indeed, it is Murdoch’s death that could kickstart it all — just as is portrayed in the final series of Succession. Last week, New York Times Magazine reported that the family trust will expire in 2030, at which point the siblings would have to work out what to do next. But with Murdoch being 93 years old and there still being five years to go before the trust is up, nobody has any idea what will happen next in the real-life dynasty drama. We’ll simply have to wait and see.
