Christopher McDonald is looking back at a Hollywood breakup that left him devastated before producing an unexpectedly funny reunion years later.
The 71-year-old Happy Gilmore actor says he and Geena Davis had been engaged for about five weeks when she fell in love with Jeff Goldblum while filming the 1985 comedy Transylvania 6-5000 in Europe. Recalling the relationship during an August 18 SAG-AFTRA Foundation career retrospective, McDonald summed up his reaction simply: “But I was broken,” according to PEOPLE.
McDonald was still performing as Laertes in a production of Hamlet and expected to join Davis in Europe once his final three weeks onstage were finished. Instead, he said their mutual friend and Transylvania 6-5000 costar Ed Begley Jr. delivered the news that changed those plans.
Davis has since acknowledged that her relationship with Goldblum began while she was still engaged to McDonald and expressed regret about hurting him. Years later, she and McDonald found themselves working together again under circumstances neither could have easily predicted. They played husband and wife in Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise.
McDonald Says the Breakup Left Him ‘Really, Really Devastated’
McDonald said he does not hold Goldblum responsible for what happened. Looking back on relationships developing between actors working closely together, he acknowledged that romances sometimes begin on sets even though that perspective did little to soften the experience for him at the time.
He had expected to finish his Hamlet run and travel to Europe to join Davis. With roughly three weeks left in the production, Begley gave him the news that Davis’ feelings had changed. “I got the bad news from Ed Begley,” McDonald recalled, adding that the actor “did me that solid.”
McDonald described himself as “really, really devastated.” The breakup came after he and Davis had progressed beyond dating to an engagement and were planning a future together. Goldblum and Davis went on to marry in November 1987 after also starring together in The Fly. Their marriage ended several years later, with Davis filing for divorce in 1990.
Davis Has Acknowledged How Their Engagement Ended
Davis addressed the relationship herself 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. Davis described him warmly but acknowledged that she ended the relationship after falling for Goldblum.
As E! News reported, Davis wrote that she had “broke his heart to be with Jeff” and said McDonald did not deserve the pain she caused him. She also expressed gratitude that he eventually forgave her.
Five Years Later, They Ended Up Playing Husband and Wife
Their history gained an almost cinematic twist roughly five years later when McDonald became Darryl Dickinson, the controlling husband of Davis’ Thelma in the 1991 road movie Thelma & Louise.
McDonald’s recollection of the moment emphasizes Ridley Scott revealing his casting to Davis. He said Davis asked the director who would play her husband, and Scott described the actor before finally giving her McDonald’s name.
According to Entertainment Weekly, McDonald recalled Davis responding that she used to date him. Scott’s reaction was essentially that their history made the casting even better.
Davis has provided another piece of the story. In her memoir, she said she actually recommended McDonald for the role because she considered him a talented and extremely funny actor. A 2011 Vanity Fair oral history of the movie similarly reported that Davis recommended her former boyfriend for Darryl.
McDonald called Davis and invited her to lunch before they began working together. The former couple “hugged it out,” he said, and spent what he remembered as a pleasant afternoon together.
Then the Set Decorators Asked Them to Take Wedding Photos
The production soon gave the former fiancés an assignment that made their reunion even more surreal. Set decorators needed photographs for Thelma and Darryl’s home, including images showing the fictional couple as newlyweds. That meant McDonald and Davis, who had once planned an actual marriage, now had to pose together for fake wedding pictures.
McDonald recalled both of them recognizing the absurdity immediately and laughing about it. The photographs became part of the set dressing for Thelma’s suburban home. By then, the real relationship that could have made the situation painful had evolved enough that McDonald could appreciate the irony.
He had already described the experience similarly decades earlier. In a 1992 interview with the Los Angeles Times, published shortly after the movie’s release, McDonald said working opposite Davis had been “great” and “really cathartic.”
McDonald Says He and Davis Are ‘Dear Friends’ Today
More than four decades after their engagement ended, McDonald speaks about Davis without the bitterness that might be expected from his description of how painful the breakup originally was. He called her a “remarkable woman” during the SAG-AFTRA Foundation conversation and said the former couple are “dear friends” today.
McDonald also specifically mentioned Davis’ memoir and thanked her for what she wrote about their relationship. Their lives moved in different directions after Thelma & Louise. McDonald married actress Lupe Gidley in 1992, and they have four children. Davis later married filmmaker Renny Harlin and then Reza Jarrahy, with whom she shares three children.