To say Candy and Tori Spelling have a complicated relationship would be an understatement.
The Beverly Hills, 90210 star’s ups and downs with her mother were exposed when her father, Aaron Spelling, died in 2006, less than one year after Tori came under fire for having an affair with Dean McDermott. (She was married to Charlie Shahnaian when she met McDermott on set in 2005, while the actor was married to Mary Jo Eustace.) Tori, who only inherited $800,000 of Aaron’s reported $500 million, had seen her dad for the first time in months just weeks before his passing, she wrote in her 2008 memoir, as her family struggled with her decision to elope with McDermott.
Candy later blamed the actress for Aaron’s death in a radio interview. “My daughter one day decided that she wasn’t speaking to my husband, myself and my son, and that’s how it’s continued for the last, oh gosh, four or five years,” Candy told 94.7 WMAS-FM’s Kellogg Krew in 2009. “And it was sad. That’s what killed my husband, actually. He just didn’t want to live after that.”
Earlier that year, Candy had released an open letter to her daughter, claiming her daughter wasn’t speaking to her and she hadn’t met Tori’s eldest daughter, Stella, who was born in 2008. (Tori and McDermott share five kids: Liam, born in 2007, Stella, Hattie, born in 2011, Beau, born in 2017, and Finn, born in 2012.)
Tori, for her part, told People at the time the pair weren’t “not talking” they just hadn’t “talked” recently.
“I love my mother. I’ve always loved her [and] no doubt she loves me. There’s no feud,” she said. “We simply never meshed.”
As time went on, Candy slowly developed a relationship with Tori’s kids and even helped Tori with financial struggles in 2013.
The family drama eventually subsided. In October 2022, Tori told Sirius XM’s “Jeff Lewis Live” that she and her mom “text every single day.”
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Scroll through for a timeline of Tori and Candy’s ups and downs:
