Christopher McDonald Says Geena Davis Left Him for Jeff Goldblum Weeks After Their Engagement

Now This Is Thee Kind Of Old Hollywood Spillage We Want

Now THIS is the drama-rama of it all. Not Love Island this, Housewives that, or another manufactured reality-TV triangle. We are talking a genuinely messy piece of 1980s Hollywood history involving Christopher McDonald, Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum — and nearly four decades later, McDonald is finally giving the breakup its full emotional close-up.

The Hacks and Happy Gilmore actor revealed during an August 22 career retrospective with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation that he and Davis had been engaged for only about five weeks when she fell in love with Goldblum while making the 1985 horror-comedy Transylvania 6-5000 in Europe.

And McDonald does not pretend the ending was easy. He said the split left him “broken” and “really, really devastated.”

Five Weeks Engaged — Then Jeff Goldblum Entered The Picture

McDonald’s version is refreshingly free of decades-old score-settling. Recalling the breakup, he said Davis fell for Goldblum while she was overseas making the movie and added that he did not blame Goldblum: Davis was “stunningly beautiful,” and, as McDonald put it, things can happen on sets.

The sting was still very real. McDonald was performing in Hamlet at the time, and according to his recollection, fellow actor Ed Begley Jr. was the person who broke the news to him.

Geena Davis Has Already Admitted She Broke His Heart

Here is what makes the story even juicier — and much less one-sided: Davis herself has acknowledged the overlap. In her 2022 memoir Dying of Politeness, she wrote that she was living with and engaged to McDonald when she left to make Transylvania 6-5000, describing him as one of the most wonderful men she had ever known.

Davis also admitted that she broke McDonald’s heart to be with Goldblum, writing that McDonald did not deserve it and that she remained grateful he eventually forgave her.

Davis and Goldblum married in 1987 and went on to star together in The Fly and Earth Girls Are Easy. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1990.

Then Hollywood Cast McDonald As Geena Davis’ Husband Anyway

Because Hollywood apparently has a wicked sense of humor, McDonald and Davis crossed paths again professionally in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, where he played Darryl — the controlling husband of Davis’ character, Thelma.

Even better: Davis has said she recommended McDonald for the part because she knew how talented and funny he was. McDonald has described working together again as “cathartic,” and said the two were ultimately able to reconnect without carrying the old breakup into the film.

So yes, the man got dumped for Jeff Goldblum, spent years carrying the heartbreak, and then wound up playing his ex-fiancée’s husband in one of the defining movies of the 1990s. You could not pitch this without somebody calling it too on-the-nose.

Geena Davis And Jeff Goldblum’s Chemistry Continued On Screen

The supplied images come from Earth Girls Are Easy, the 1988 musical comedy Davis and Goldblum made together after their relationship had already become very real off-screen.

Scenes from Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), which reunited Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum on screen after their romance began. Exact still-image credit requires verification.

McDonald, meanwhile, went on to marry actress Lupe Gidley in 1992. More than 40 years after the original heartbreak, his retelling sounds less like bitterness and more like somebody finally able to look back at a spectacularly Hollywood breakup and say: yeah, that one hurt.

Watch Geena Davis And Jeff Goldblum In Earth Girls Are Easy

The supplied YouTube clip revisits the 1988 musical comedy that paired Davis and Goldblum on screen after their relationship had begun several years earlier.

Sources: SAG-AFTRA Foundation; E! News; Geena Davis, Dying of Politeness.