UMA EX: I CHEATED - ON MY HS TEST
Now heat’s on wily playboy in court
Uma Thurman’s lawyer hammered her French financier ex-boyfriend in their Manhattan custody trial Thursday, grilling him about cheating on a high-school test, an alleged addiction to prostitutes and his rocky relationship with another ex, supermodel Elle Macpherson.
“Did you tell Ms. Thurman you had paid someone to take your baccalaureate exam for you?” the lawyer, Eleanor Alter, asked in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“Yes,” Arpad “Arki” Busson answered from the witness stand. The then-17-year-old Busson was enrolled at Institut Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland at the time.
“Did you also tell Ms. Thurman you had been addicted to prostitutes?” Alter asked. “No,” Busson said. Judge Matthew Cooper, who’s presiding over a two-week custody trial between the former couple for a parenting schedule with their 4year-old daughter, Luna, cut off further questioning on the subject.
Thurman, 46, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, looked down and away from her ex during the hearing. Busson, 53, in a dark suit, leaned forward on the witness stand with his hands folded.
Alter also asked Busson about threatening Macpherson, a former girlfriend and the mother of his two teenage sons.
“You had threatened Ms. Macpherson, which caused her to wear a wire?” Alter asked.
“Objection,” Busson’s lawyer interrupted. The judge sustained.
Busson blasted back at Thurman, the actress whom he dated for seven years through 2014, under redirect questioning from his attorney, Peter Bronstein.
“Every time that I’m supposed to see Luna, there is major drama,” he Busson said.
The London-based businessman said that at first he was very excited when he learned last summer that his daughter was coming to visit him for her birthday. But, he said, Thurman suddenly invited herself along.
“I was blackmailed. I had to buy business-class tickets for the nanny and the mother and the daughter at an exorbitant price,” he griped about the $30,000 cost.
“Did you subsequently learn why the mother wanted to come to London?” Bronstein asked.
“Yes, her lover was in London,” Busson said.
The verbal pounding continued until the late afternoon when Alter questioned Busson about allegedly being a neglectful dad.
She said he returned Luna to her mother on Monday with “matted hair” and “in dirty clothes.” Alter also said Busson once offered to give up all “his rights to Luna in exchange for giving up child support.”
Busson admitted making the offer but claimed that Thurman makes it so “onerous” to see his daughter that he often feels like “giving up.”