Following Brad Pitt’s heart-rending confessional, Angelina’s new interview sees her play the wounded party
As she gives her first full interview since the split, heat discovers the truth behind it
Three months after Brad Pitt’s soul-baring GQ Style interview, Angelina Jolie has fired back with one of her own. But heat has learned that what Ange said in the Vanity Fair chat isn’t necessarily the full story, with sources telling heat it’s “also about getting back at Brad”.
Following their September 2016 split, it seemed like everybody from fans to their Hollywood peers sided with Brad, leaving a frustrated Angelina determined to get her version of events across. “Angie feels that she has this image of a husband-stealing ice queen, while Brad is the all-american good guy,” an insider tells us. That only increased following Brad’s interview, but she now has a chance to tell her side of the story.”
While Ange, 42, initially hoped that Brad’s confession to
GQ about his excessive drinking and drug use would result in the public siding with her, it didn’t work out that way. “Brad owning up to his mistakes and saying he was trying to be a better father made the public incredibly sympathetic towards him, and Ange worries that people see her as someone who is
preventing him from seeing his six children,” says the insider.
We’re told Angelina hopes her interview will change those views. “She wants to explain that what destroyed her family wasn’t the divorce, but the events that preceded it – which was Brad’s alcohol-fuelled temper,” our source explains.
During the interview, Ange tellingly referred to her six children – Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 11, and nine-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox – as “very brave”, adding that at times “they needed to be”. Before the split, Brad allegedly flew into a drunken rage with son Maddox during a flight on a private jet. The FBI was called in, but the investigation was later dropped. Ange went on to reveal her children were “all just healing from the events that led to the filing...they’re not healing from divorce. They’re healing from some... from life, from things in life.” She also added, “I do not want my children to be worried about me. I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be alright, even when you’re not sure it is.” Cue mental images of Angelina crying over Brad’s “behaviour” in the shower… “This way, Angie looks like both a martyr and a saviour,” our source explains. “Add in the constant references to being a stay-at-home single mum and you can see she’s desperately trying to change her image.” Her health revelations were all part of the grand plan, too – with the star choosing to reveal she suffered from hypertension (high blood pressure) and Bell’s Palsy (a type of facial paralysis). “Sometimes women in families put themselves last until it manifests itself in their own health,’” she said. “I actually feel like more of a woman, because I’m being smart about my choices, and I’m putting my family first.”
However, our source says, “Ange makes it sound like her Bell’s Palsy and self-neglect could be because of how Brad acted in the last year of her marriage, and escaping him has ‘cured’ her. But the truth is, no one can be sure what caused it.”
And despite Ange’s tales of domestic normality (she told the magazine she’s “just being a homemaker and picking up dog poop, cleaning dishes and reading bedtime stories”), our source says the reality is another story. “Ange has a cook for the kids, a TV manager to choose TV programmes and the bodyguards take them on wilderness trips in their enormous backyard. They’re meant to spend 30 minutes a day cleaning their rooms, but they’re getting the nannies to do it…”
Over to you, Brad…n
‘Ange thinks Brad’s alcohol-fuelled temper destroyed the marriage’