That still doesn’t impress her much. Shania Twain gave a rare update on her relationship (or lack thereof) with ex-husband Robert “Mutt” Lange and former friend Marie-Anne Thiebaud 15 years after their affair rocked the country music icon’s world.
“Once life was going so well, I settled too well into that almost forgetting that you never know what’s around the next corner. That hit me hard,” Twain, 57, said on a recent episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast as the topic of her divorce came up. “I don’t think that a lot of things that happened to me since my divorce should have been so hard on me. I should have been less naive about life’s ups and downs. Maybe I’m too much, like, ‘That’s all behind me.’”
Dax Shepard admitted that he was “really nervous” to bring up the fact that the “Honey! I’m Home” singer is now married to Thiébaud’s ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, because he didn’t know if the topic embarrassed her.
“It’s not embarrassing,” Twain replied.
Twain and Lange, who worked together on several of her best-selling albums, split in 2008 amid the affair allegations. The two couples were friends for years before they played “musical chairs” — as Shepard put it.
“I did not get close to Fred at all, we didn’t have each other’s numbers. He was not really part of our daily lives because he’s working these crazy hours. A lot of travel [for his] very high-profile company, just suit and tie and so he would be around, like, weekend dinners and stuff like that — we would all eat together and that was it,” Twain said of her relationship with Frédéric before they learned about the cheating. “And then it would be mostly him and Mutt chatting, so I didn’t really know Fred very well. I guess it was a beautiful surprise to then see how gracefully and graciously he was dealing with navigating the same pain.”
The twosome bonded as they ended their respective marriages.
“He was so thoughtful about it all. … It was not cool with him, but he was smarter about it,” Twain explained. “I was uncontrollably fragile over it, which I had never felt before ever because I thought for once I was stable. I really believe that I’m safe, so that really devastated me I think more than any other instability I’ve ever felt.”
Twain said she couldn’t believe she could be “so stupid,” but Frédéric going through the same thing made her feel better.
“Fred’s so smart. This is one of the smartest people I know [and] he didn’t know either. That helped me feel better. … Neither of us saw it coming. … I allowed myself to trust too much. … I did let my guard down too much,” the Grammy winner continued. “I was angry, though. The anger comes a lot from my childhood too because I’m thinking, ‘Man, you can do anything to me, but if you f—king lie, like, right to my f—king face? Now, I’m so angry.’ It wasn’t just, ‘Infidelity happens.’ That was not me. I spun around in that for quite a while. That was the hardest part to let go of really, the anger.”
Twain confirmed that Lange and Marie-Anne are still together, but they aren’t in touch unless she has to text about their son, Eja, who was born in 2001.
“I never have. I mean, Mutt and I parent well together — for people who don’t talk to each other,” Twain said. “We’ll just text. We both love our son so much, so we don’t play any games like that. We have the same priority, we share spaces for him. No nonsense there. … I think everyone gets what they deserve. … I got what I deserve — I got the greatest man on the planet.”
