Before Keith Urban ended his 19-year marriage to Nicole Kidman, he complained that he felt “lonely and miserable” while on tour.
The country music star reflected on the hardships of touring in an upcoming episode of his competition series “The Road,” according to the Daily Mail.
“Where do we start?” Urban, 57, asks in the episode, which premieres Oct. 19. “It’s a calling. It’s either you do it or you don’t.”
The “You’ll Think of Me” singer explains that the show must always go on, no matter how you feel.
“When you wake up at 3:30 in the morning on a tour bus, feeling sick as a dog, and you’re in the middle of nowhere, and you have to play your fifth show later that night, and you can’t get any sleep, and you can’t see your friends, you can’t see your family, and you’re completely alone and miserable and sick, you say to yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’
“The only answer is: Because this is what I was born to do,” he continues.
The CBS and Paramount+ series follows 12 artists as they compete to be Urban’s opening act at music venues across the United States.
Urban’s candid comments about his struggles on tour surfaced just weeks after Page Six confirmed he and Kidman had separated.
“Sometimes relationships just pass on their own,” a source said in September, adding that Kidman, 58, “didn’t want to separate and was trying to salvage things.”
TMZ reported at the time that Urban had moved out of the family home and Kidman was caring for their daughters. Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14 (Kidman also has two adult children with her first husband, Tom Cruise).
“Since Keith has been gone,[Kidman]has been keeping the family connected during this difficult time,” a source told the outlet, referring to their current tour.
Days later, rumors that Urban and guitarist Maggie Bo were in a relationship sparked after a clip of the two musicians making out on stage was leaked online.
Maggie’s father Chuck Baugh denied this speculation, telling the Daily Mail, “I don’t know anything about her other than that she is Maggie’s guitarist.”
“This is more of a musician issue than a dating issue,” he added.
Meanwhile, a clip has resurfaced of Maggie saying she’s against the band’s romance.
Although Kidman has not directly addressed their breakup, she shared a message about her recovery in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar published last week.
“No matter how painful, how difficult, how devastating an event, it’s meaningful to know that there is a way to get through it,” she says.
The rift between Kidman and Urban began in June, when Urban abruptly ended a Zoom interview after being asked about Kidman’s steamy love scene with Zac Efron in the 2024 Netflix film Family Affair.
The “Big Little Lies” actress and Urban met at the G’Day USA Gala in January 2005 and married a year later.