Mary Jo Eustace and Dean McDermott — together again? ‘We do have this very good chemistry still.’

“Welcome to my life. I’m up against a dynasty.”

What Mary Jo Eustace had to say to me some sixteen years ago.

Caught up then in a tabloid tsunami — when her husband, Canadian actor Dean McDermott ditched her for Tori Spelling whilst shooting some ghastly TV movie called “Mind Over Murder” — it had all come to a head at the MuchMusic awards in Toronto. Spelling — Dean in tow — was a presenter; Eustace, an attendee. Throwing a fit, Tori had Mary Jo thrown out, forcing her to watch the telecast in an office and only able to rejoin the party after Spelling had departed.

I remember it well. I was there with her in the office! “I remember they brought us shrimp,” recalls Eustace, best known for her fizzy, late-’90s Canadian cooking show with Ken Kostick, “What’s For Dinner?”

“She plays the victim card over and over,” Spelling later told Page Six. “It’s pathetic bordering on lunacy. I hope for the sake of her children she gains some self-respect.” Ouch. Tori’s dad Aaron Spelling — the most prolific TV producer of all time — died soon after, which, of course, set off a fresh sideshow of headlines for the celebutante (Inheritance woes! A feud with mommy Candy!), while Mary Jo and Dean carried on their many-splintered feud. Lawyers. Lawsuits. Custody issues (they had one son, Jack, together, and had been in the process of adopting a daughter, Lola, at the time). Battles fought through the press, and icky shenanigans. And finally … well … friendship?

If time heals all wounds, so do podcasts, apparently. Remarkably, the two crash-and-burn exes just announced they are collaborating on one of their own. Yes, really. Called “Ex’s & Uh-Oh’s!”, it seeks to explore the “super fun world of divorce, hatred, and friendship.” A podcast about reflection and forgiveness. With a laugh or three.

“A long time coming:” how Eustace characterized it when I caught up with her this week. Speaking to me from her home in L.A., where she has lived for more than a decade now, she told me the idea began to take shape when she and her former husband spent time together in San Francisco in May, having assembled then for Jack’s college graduation.

“We talked about the idea of becoming friends with an ex,” she went on. “We do have this very good chemistry still. I like Dean as a person. I enjoy our time together.” (Eustace has a boyfriend, she makes a point of pointing. This is not a Bennifer situation, FYI!)

Has doing the podcast — billed as a 12-parter, with some special guests, too — brought some answers? I wondered.

“Yeah, I have gotten some answers, insights that I never knew. Tori is a master press person. She grew up with that. She had that advantage, back then. We made mistakes on the way,” Eustace reflected, adding, “Dean is not especially introspective. He is really tearing up on this. And he is trying really hard to change. He is invested in changing. He wants to tell his story. He is owning it. And I think this is going to give him his mojo back.”

Sounding pretty Zen — like a woman who burns a lot of Diptyque candles, and knows her Brené Brown — Eustace added, “Divorce is like a phantom limb. That to me was interesting to examine.”

McDermott, meanwhile, looks at this experience with his ex this way (via a text message sent along to me): “We’ve always had the ability to make each other laugh and after 17 years of divorce, it’s still there. The podcast is like a therapy session with lots of shits and giggles. My wish is that, at the end of the day, our listeners will have a good laugh, and hopefully learn something from our journey.”

Indeed, it is turning into a family affair, the project. Their son, Jack, is going to join in on one of the episodes. He is jazzed. Already, too, Eustace’s own dad has made a cameo. “My father has not seen Dean for 20 years and the first time they talked was on (the) podcast. And Dean apologized to him.”

And what about Tori herself — the so-called Other Woman, from all these years ago, who went on to have five (!) children with Dean, and whose own marriage to him has been under the microscope lately (is it in trouble?)? Eustace tells me that Spelling is supportive of the podcast, and there is a strong possibility she is going to come on an ep, as well.

Asked to offer some advice to another more recent celebrity couple, right in the muck of a bitter split these days — that would be Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis — Eustace is perspicacious: “Somewhere in the middle is the truth of all of that. It has been ugly on both sides. But when you are in that situation — unless you are highly evolved” — tiny chuckle — “it is very difficult. What I would say to them is: try to take yourself out of the moment, and look at it down the line. Especially with kids involved. How can I make this a good divorce?”

Turning to the idea of “debilitating shame” — one that so many people naturally shoulder when a marriage reaches the end of its time — she says, “that is a poisonous idea” and “shame, of course, is the most damaging emotion ever.”

Caps Eustace: “When I look back at these people — the two of us, me and Dean, from years ago — I have such compassion for them.”

“Ex’s & Uh-Oh’s” is available on all podcast platforms, and is dropping episodes weekly.

Shinan Govani is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist covering culture and society. Follow him on Twitter: @shinangovani

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