Eddie joins Mel’s divorce battle
AS EXES GO, THEY’RE HARDLY GWYNETH AND CHRIS, but last week Eddie Murphy joined forces with Mel B in her battle to stop former husband Stephen Belafonte from seeing their 10-year-old daughter, Angel.
To recap: back in 2007, Eddie publicly denied he was Angel’s father (memorably causing Mel’s bandmate Victoria Beckham to label him ‘Beverly Hills cock’ and threaten to ‘chop his dick off’). Mel then forced Eddie to take a paternity test, proving he was the father, and he had to pay $8 million in support and damages.
Now, Eddie has instructed his lawyers to block Belafonte’s attempts to see Angel, after an LA judge gave film producer Belafonte the go-ahead to push for visitation rights. Eddie has said that he wants Belafonte – who has a string of criminal convictions including one for beating up his former common-law wife, Nicole Contreras – to be kept away from his daughter. Meanwhile, Belafonte, who married the Spice Girl just three months after she gave birth to Angel, believes he has every right to continue seeing her as he is ‘the only father she has ever known’.
Sources say that Mel, who is fighting a court case over accusations of his extensive domestic abuse during their 10-year marriage, is adamant he should never have any contact with Angel again. She has been granted a restraining order keeping him away from her family, saying she lives ‘in fear’ of him.
Eddie’s support of Mel will surprise many, given their chequered history, but according to one source, ‘Eddie and Mel privately resolved their differences some years ago. They speak. They see each other every now and again with Angel and the rest of the family. But Eddie has met Stephen and he has never liked or trusted him. He was delighted when Mel split from him and horrified by all the stories of domestic abuse that came out after she left him.’
In a declaration to the court to obtain her restraining order in March, Mel detailed several accounts of her estranged husband’s violent behaviour towards her and admitted she was so beaten down by him that she was driven to attempt suicide in 2014. Her desperate attempts to go to hospital were blocked by him shutting her in a room. And when she famously appeared on The X Factor final in 2014 covered in bruises, she said her injuries were a result of an incident with Belafonte.
‘Eddie has no wish for his daughter to be anywhere near a man like that,’ said the source.