my wife, no longer

Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher Announce Divorce After 13 Years of Marriage

“After a long tennis match lasting over twenty years, we are finally putting our racquets down,” the couple said in a joint statement revealing their 2023 split.
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After 13 years of marriage, Sacha Baron Cohen is no longer calling Isla Fisher “my wife.”

In a statement released via their respective social media accounts on Friday, the couple revealed that they split last year. “After a long tennis match lasting over twenty years, we are finally putting our racquets down. In 2023 we jointly filed to end our marriage,” they said in a statement shared in their Instagram Stories. “We have always prioritized 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.”

After meeting at a party in Sydney, Australia, back in 2001, Baron Cohen and Fisher wed in 2010; they share three children. “She was hilarious. We were at a very pretentious party, and me and her bonded over taking the mick out of the other people in the party,” Baron Cohen recalled of their meet-cute in a 2020 interview with The New York Times. “I knew instantly. I don’t know if she did.”

That same year, Fisher told People that Baron Cohen was the reason she had sought out funny roles. “Sacha was the reason I got into comedy,” she said. “I was going up for a lot of dramatic roles and getting rejected. He said, ‘You’re one of the funniest people I know. You should be doing comedy.’”

The actors worked together on 2016’s The Brothers Grimsby, a project that has embroiled Baron Cohen in controversy for the last several days. His costar Rebel Wilson has accused him of being a “massive asshole” on the set in her new memoir, Rebel Rising, and has alleged that he tried to prevent press on her book from being released.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Wilson called her work on The Brothers Grimsby, which Baron Cohen starred in, cowrote, and produced, “the worst professional experience of my career.” She talked about feeling “disrespected” on the set of the film, in which she played Baron Cohen’s character’s girlfriend, but said she refrained from speaking out for fear of being branded “a troublemaker” in the industry. Baron Cohen vehemently denied the allegations. “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,” the actor said through a spokesperson in a statement to Vanity Fair.

In a statement to VF, a spokesperson for a Brothers Grimsby producer defended Baron Cohen’s behavior on the set of the film, stating in part: “In my capacity as a writer and producer, I was present with Sacha and Rebel on pretty much a daily basis, from the moment she was engaged as an actor to the moment the movie wrapped and she was no longer involved. Throughout this entire period, she was treated with the utmost respect and empowerment and was welcomed as a collaborator in all creative areas; the script, costume, hair, makeup— everything that involved her.”

Earlier this week, Fisher took to Instagram to share a photo of herself enjoying “girls night at the theater” in London with Naomi Watts, Michelle Dockery, and producer Bruna Papandrea.