This divorce mentioned on the Muggle news could possibly be a sly reference to Branagh and Thompson’s real-life split, which did happen in real life in 1995. So why did the two acclaimed writer-performers, who have both won Academy Awards for their screenplays (Branagh for “Belfast” and Thompson for “Sense and Sensibility”), part ways? Branagh was unfaithful… with fellow future “Harry Potter” star Helena Bonham Carter.
Carter and Branagh worked together on “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” in 1994, and it’s widely known that the two had an on-set tryst; this is on-brand for Branagh, who met Thompson during their time working on “The Fortunes of War” in 1987. Years after the fact in 2022, Thompson admitted to The New Yorker that the experience was crushing for her. “I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” she told the magazine. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”
Tragically, Thompson continued: “I was half alive. Any sense of being a lovable or worthy person had gone completely.” The good news? She remarried in 2003 and has been happy with actor Greg Wise, who appeared in “Sense & Sensibility,” ever since. “I’ve learned more from my second marriage just by being married,” she told The New Yorker. “As my mother says, ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.’ “