The jokes, friends say, land softly. Over dinner or on a quiet phone call, Nicole Kidman will apparently roll her eyes, make a wry comment about her ex-husband's latest headline, and then move the conversation on. Nothing cruel, nothing theatrical. Just the kind of dry, slightly weary humour that tends to arrive after a marriage of nearly 20 years has come apart in front of the world.
Behind those private asides, though, is a woman watching Keith Urban's post-divorce reinvention play out on social media timelines and gossip sites, just like everyone else — except that for her, the cast list includes the father of her children.
Kidman and Urban, both 58, separated in September after 19 years together. Their split ended one of Hollywood's more durable cross-Atlantic partnerships: an Australian Oscar winner and a New Zealand–born, Nashville-rooted country star raising two daughters, Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith, 15, between film sets and arena tours.
Now, Urban's new life is being pored over in forensic — and often gleeful — detail.
Since the break-up, Urban has been linked to a string of much younger women, most prominently rising country singer Karley Scott Collins, 26, who joined him on his 2025 High and Alive World Tour, and 25-year-old musician Maggie Baugh. The age gap alone has been enough to feed an entire cottage industry of online commentary about the country star's supposed 'new era'.
By January, speculation had curdled into full-blown rumour. One report claimed Urban and Collins had already moved in together — a storyline juicier than anything country radio could dream up, and just as loosely tethered to reality. Collins shut it down bluntly.
Country singer Karley Scott Collins broke her silence on reports that she is living with Keith Urban following his divorce from Nicole Kidman, calling the rumor "ridiculous."https://t.co/F7g0wIv6ddpic.twitter.com/pffYXnEkFx
'Y'all, this is absolutely RIDICULOUS and untrue,' she wrote on Instagram on 18 January, the capital letters doing most of the heavy lifting. For a younger artist in Nashville, being framed overnight as the older star's live-in girlfriend is not career-enhancing; it's a problem to manage.
From the Kidman camp, the tone has been more resigned than outraged. 'Nicole isn't sitting at home blindsided by any of this,' a source close to the actor told OK!. 'If anything, there's a sense of weary acceptance. What she feels is more disappointment than shock.'
That disappointment, the insider suggested, isn't so much about individual names as about the pattern they seem to form.
Source: International Business Times UK
