Tori Spelling, Dean McDermott. Tommaso Boddi/WireImage
Tori Spelling is (re)opening up about the first time she met her now ex-husband Dean McDermott while filming Mind Over Murder in 2005.
“I was sitting in the director’s office and I remember I had gone into wardrobe first and I was so not invested in this TV movie and I was just going because I was like I should be doing it right now to pay the bills,” Spelling, 51, explained on the “Misspelling” podcast on Tuesday, November 12. “And when I got to wardrobe, they had pictures of all the cast on the wall and they said, ‘Oh, have you met your leading man Dean McDermott?’”
Spelling’s wardrobe team showed her a picture of McDermott, 57 — and she wasn’t thrilled with how he looked.
“It was totally like a clean cut look, like, a cop type role,” she noted. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s a bummer. … My leading man’s not that cute. Whatever, fine.’”
Shortly after seeing his picture, McDermott walked through the door and Spelling noted that he was “totally different” than what she expected.
“His hair was longer, he was scruffy, he was dressed cool and his blue eyes and I was like, ‘Oh God, I’m in trouble,’” she explained. “He was hot.”
Following their initial meeting, Spelling exclaimed that McDermott “really sealed the deal” that night when they met up in the hotel lobby — even though they were married to different people at the time. (Spelling was married to Charlie Shanian from 2004 to 2006 while McDermott was married to Mary Jo Eustace from 1993 to 2006.)
“I remember I came down to the lobby and he looked down at my purse and he was like ‘Balenciaga’ and I was like ‘Yes.’ …. I was so impressed that he knew purses,” she told Chris Alberghini and Mike Chessler.” And then you guys met him, and then we went to dinner and then we went to a bar, and then I kissed him.”
Spelling remembered climbing over Alberghini, 59, in the booth at the bar to get to McDermott.
“The more [Chris] said ‘no,’ the more I wanted to do it,” she shared.
After their steamy kiss that night, Alberghini planned to go home — but Spelling didn’t want him to go because she knew “something’s gonna happen” between her and McDermott.
“You went home and so forever I was like, it’s your fault,” she joked with Alberghini. “We had sex, like, the first night and the next day Charlie was flying in to see me and stay for a week.”
Spelling ended up tying the knot with McDermott in 2006 and went on to welcome five children: son Liam in 2007, daughter Stella in 2008, daughter Hattie in 2011, son Finn in 2013 and son Beau in 2017.
After 17 years of marriage, Spelling and McDermott announced that they were getting a divorce in June 2023.
“It’s with great sadness and a very very heavy heart that after 18 years together and 5 amazing children, that @torispelling and I have decided to go our separate ways and start a new journey of our own,” McDermott wrote in a since-deleted Instagram statement. “We will continue to work together as loving parents and guide and love our children through this difficult time.”