ALISON BOSHOFF: Why ‘The Meghan Markle of Devon’ fell out of love with her very British Earl… As the yoga-loving Baywatch actress and aristocrat with a crumbling castle announce their 19-year marriage is ending
All it took, she later said, was a smile. ‘I walked into the bar. He looked up and smiled at me – it was the weirdest thing. It was the most ridiculous thing.’
By the end of the evening, at Las Vegas‘s Hard Rock Hotel, actress AJ Langer, who was out celebrating a friend’s hen night, fully believed she had met her future husband in the handsome, friendly Brit, who was on tour in the U.S. with his rugby team. And two years later, in 2004, when she was 30 and he 29, they were indeed married.
Which is how Allison Joy Langer, the forceful, Californian feminist who appeared in a few Baywatch episodes before finding stardom in the cult teen TV drama My So-Called Life, found herself living a life she couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams – as Countess and chatelaine of a 100-room castle dating back to the 14th century.
For the man in the bar was Charlie Courtenay, then merely Lord Courtenay, but later the 19th Earl of Devon, a floppy-haired Old Etonian – and at 6 ft 5 in a foot-and-a-half taller than AJ – whose life of privilege, a world away from hers, was to prove rather less welcoming than it had first seemed.
This week, sadly, it emerged that the 19-year-marriage between AJ, dubbed ‘Devon’s Meghan Markle‘ by the local newspaper, and her aristocrat beau with the winning smile, is over.
The Earl of Devon, Charles Courtenay, and his wife the Countess of Devon, AJ Langer, are divorcing
AJ Langer shot to fame after appearing on US TV series Baywatch as a teenager, and also starred in comedy Meet the Deedles (pictured)
Friends said this week that the demands of keeping the Grade I-listed estate (pictured) going – costs were never less than £500,000 a year and sometimes more than £1 million – had proved to be a considerable strain on the couple
On Monday, a statement was released: ‘After much care and consideration, Charles Courtenay, the Earl of Devon, and Countess of Devon, Allison Joy Courtenay, have made the decision to separate and to divorce. Charlie would like to express his gratitude for his partnership with AJ and all that they have created together as parents, friends and partners, both in Los Angeles and at Powderham.
‘The well-being of their wonderful children is the highest priority, as he and AJ focus upon co-parenting in the years ahead.’
It may have been a fairy-tale first meeting, but there was nothing romantic about the attitude of Charlie’s late father towards his future daughter-in-law.
‘I don’t see the point of it – she hasn’t got any money,’ Hugh, the 18th Earl, apparently told a friend in a muttered aside when the couple married.
Langer, who is serious and self-analytical, would say in a podcast in 2020: ‘The romance is just a ridiculous story. We thought: “This is the most ridiculous romance, let’s just milk it for all it’s worth!” You meet in Vegas, for God’s sake – and yet here we are, together years later.’
After the wedding, with Charlie’s father still struggling to accept AJ, the couple settled in the boho Californian enclave of Topanga, which had been home to the folk movement in the 1970s.
Charlie worked as a lawyer, and they had two children, Joscelyn, now 16, and Jack, 14.
But later, when the 18th Earl fell ill, they returned to the supposed splendour of the family seat – Powderham, near Exeter, which had opened to the public in 1959.
In 2015, on the death of his father, Charlie Courtenay inherited both the title and castle, a place Langer subsequently described as ‘dirty’ and ‘scary’ for their children.
Friends said this week that the demands of keeping the Grade I-listed estate going – costs were never less than £500,000 a year and sometimes more than £1 million -had proved to be a considerable strain on the couple.
Indeed, earlier this year they sold the castle’s farm shop.
The couple, pictured here at Powderham Castle, have split after 19 years, citing ‘irreconcible differences’
Charles Courtenay, 19th Earl of Devon and member of the House of Lords, pictured with his wife, AJ Langer, at Powderham Castle
After getting married, they lived in California so Ms Langer could continue her Hollywood acting career. Pictured left on the set of The Americans in 2012 and right at the Lincoln Center in New York in 2000
The Earl and Countess and their children lived in a modest, eight-roomed flat to the right of the magnificent front door – Downton Abbey it was not.
Initially, there wasn’t even a tumble drier – Charlie apparently told his wife that there was no need for one.
She tested his assertion by dumping a load of damp laundry by his side of the bed and offering him the chance to use the 1950s spin drier, which was the only available appliance. She won that particular argument.
During her years as chatelaine, the family kitchen was a converted pantry with a small electric stove – the main kitchen being open to the public (after restoration with Heritage Lottery money) and thus out of bounds for most of the year.
When the pandemic struck and Powderham was forced to close, AJ broadcast Tai Chi and yoga, from the castle on Zoom; Charlie, meanwhile, grew a long beard.
AJ sounded lonely, lamenting the lack of ‘connection’ and ‘community’ resulting from the ‘global mental trauma’ of Covid.
That trauma was something she could easily understand: ever since her teens, she has suffered from fibromyalgia, a debilitating condition that causes pain all over the body and can interfere with sleep, leaving its sufferers exhausted.
It has very likely made her believe in the link between emotional issues and physical suffering. Was this a factor in the collapse of the marriage? No one knows.
Legal papers reveal that the Earl, now 48, has brought the divorce action, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’ as the reason for the split. He lists the date of separation as September 30 and is requesting joint custody of their children. He has asked the court for permission to determine spousal support for the Countess, 49, at a later date.
It’s understood both the Earl and AJ are in California – living separately – as the castle is closed to the public until November 27.
Sources indicate that the split came as early as this April. ‘He went into an estate meeting and said: “You will see that I’m not wearing my wedding ring,”‘ said a source. ‘That was how the announcement was made.
‘The reason for the split seems to be cultural and geographical,’ I’m told. ‘The children will continue to be raised in [their mother’s] Jewish faith back in California.’
Indeed, perhaps a Happy Ever After was always destined to be just out of reach for the couple, who were separated by differences on many levels.
The couple, pictured together at Powderham Castle in Devon, met while the Earl of Devon was in Las Vegas
AJ Langer, centre, starred in Baywatch as a teenager where she played the role of Caroline Larkin
AJ’s reception by Charlie’s father seems to have especially rankled. At their first meeting, her prospective father-in-law ‘took fright’ because she had moles on her face, the couple later declared in an interview. ‘Well, it was that and the fact that we had met in a bar in Vegas,’ explained AJ.
She added: ‘It’s no different from any family who isn’t sure about their child’s choice. I don’t think it was malicious. We had an awkward stage, but a lot of families have that. They love their son. They want to make sure. It would have been hard, I guess, for anyone to take seriously their kid who ran off with a chick they just met.
‘We gave them space. We spent time in Topanga – they would come to visit and saw what we created there. And enjoyed it.
‘And we saw that they enjoyed having their space and being able to keep things [at Powderham] the way that they needed them to be.
‘They spent so much time and energy on this house and this estate. This was their home. We learnt a mutual respect that grew over the years.’
Yet, even the announcement that they were to marry was overshadowed – by the death of the family tortoise, Timmy, who was an astonishing 165 years old.
‘We shrieked: “We’re engaged!” and they said: “Oh. Have you heard? Timmy died,”‘ AJ recalled.
In 2008, Powderham’s licence to hold weddings on the premises was revoked after Charlie’s father declined to permit gay marriages there ‘on religious grounds’. (This was deeply ironic given the castle’s history. Much of the interior was done under William ‘Kitty’ Courtenay, the 9th Earl, who was also known as ‘the flamboyant 3rd Viscount’. He was found in bed with a famous architect, William Beckford, when he was only 14 and was later hounded out of England due to his homosexuality.)
The decision, however, was among several reasons the couple opted to give Charlie’s parents ‘space’. AJ said: ‘We felt we couldn’t be involved in a business that was discriminatory.’
The 18th Earl later changed his views and the licence was restored to Powderham in 2013.
By the time of his death in 2015, the family estate had shrunk to 3,500 acres (from about 50,000 in the early 20th century). The family had been reduced to selling off parcels of land to meet death duties including, disastrously, one which is now a lucrative car park. But despite the challenges, the castle receives more than 40,000 visitors a year and still includes four farms, 33 houses and three miles of foreshore.
Charlie scaled back his legal work to devote himself to ‘rescuing’ Powderham. AJ also left behind her acting career to concentrate on the ‘day by day’ requirements of her young family.
But problems came thick and fast. Within a year of inheriting the estate, a crack in the incinerator tower cost more than £100,000 to put right.
In a podcast interview in 2020, AJ recalled: ‘When we moved in… it was dirty and scary. My Californian kids were like: “Argh!”‘
In another interview, she said: ‘Everything is falling apart. My husband won’t let us fix the door, because it has always been broken and he finds it sweet.
‘[The castle is] hard for keeping track of people. Our kids could not stand it because they just kept losing us, but it’s really good for hide and seek.’
AJ was probably best known for her role as Rayanne Graff (left) in 1990s teen drama My So-Called Life
When they met she had no idea that the beaming British lawyer (pictured) – who was on tour with an English rugby union club and wearing a kilt – was the heir to a spectacular 4,000-acre estate in the West Country
The couple have since opened the grounds to festivals, including Radio 1’s Big Weekend. Michael Bublé and Coldplay have performed there, and Bear Grylls also hosted a festival. Weddings remain a crucial revenue stream.
Sources say Charlie – described as ‘very grand but not pompous’ – has ambitions to make Powderham ‘Devon’s premier castle’.
Under the guidance of AJ, there have been yoga classes, education programmes and sensory garden experiences for locals, as well as charitable ventures – including a project aimed at mentoring local musicians aged 13 to 19.
During her time at Powderham, AJ became acutely aware that any attempts at modernisation would mean butting heads with tradition. ‘The English have a really good sense of humour,’ she mused three years ago. ‘But it can be a bit much and it can be a bit subjugating of women.’
Among the first people she met when they moved were the Fulfords, of The F***ing Fulfords reality TV fame, who live just up the road.
History of Earl of Devon’s ancestral castle
Powderham Castle came into the Courtenay family in the dowry of Margaret de Bohun on her marriage to Hugh Courtenay, the son of the first Courtenay Earl of Devon, in 1325.
The Courtenays had travelled to England from France in the reign of Henry II and had acquired many lands and power in the South West by marriages to wealthy heiresses.
The castle’s medieval core was built by Sir Philip Courtenay in the early 1400s.
It has remained in the Courtenay family ever since. It was expanded by acclaimed English architect James Wyatt in the 18th century.
Powderham Castle features in the Domesday Book, a record of the ‘Great Survey’ of much of England and areas of Wales, made in 1086 on the orders of King William the Conqueror.
For more history, visit: Powderham.co.uk
Advertisement
In their Channel 4 documentary, the Fulfords were shown struggling to keep their dilapidated mansion from falling apart, with Francis Fulford frequently turning the air blue amid the chaos of his unconventional family.
The viewing public found it hilarious – AJ much less so.
‘They were my welcoming committee, and it was just extraordinary,’ she told The Times in 2016. ‘They swear all the time. The shows were about them swearing at each other, the kids swearing at the parents, the parents swearing at the kids, and at the dogs. Dog poo on the floor: them proud that they’re not going to clean it up. Dogs on the table.
‘They provide all the reasons why people don’t like that class of people with big houses.
‘Although other [aristocrats] I know loved it – for us, it’s a little close to home.’
The incessant boozing was another aspect of British life she found peculiar: ‘We barely drank in California. I’m not that good with alcohol and we had a totally healthy lifestyle. But it’s very difficult not to drink here. Everyone is like ‘Drink! Drink! Drink!’
‘I end up holding something all evening and pretending. And you can’t let your glass get low because they’ll fill it. And if you say no they get angry.’
MUSING on the move to Devon, she said in 2020: ‘I have learned a lot over the years, but I think I underestimated the step [of relocating].
‘I was a completely independent person from the age of 15. I lived alone and travelled alone a lot and always went to the beat of my own drum. And then here I was in the middle of really intense and very, very deep-rooted patriarchy. It has been really fascinating.
‘The focus went on grounding our family. I underestimated the realities for myself. It was the same for my husband, who had been a hippy, feminist husband for ten years and I’m like “where did he go?” because, all of a sudden, these patriotic things started coming out of his mouth and I’m like: “Who are you?”‘
Now it seems, she may return to the acting career, along with a relocation back to Topanga.
Indeed, she seemed to predict as much back in 2020. ‘I have a feeling it will happen in some way,’ she said then.
It’s an instinct for change that served her well when she first set eyes on Charlie Courtenay’s smile in that Las Vegas bar. But you wouldn’t blame her now, perhaps, for choosing sunny California over another chilly winter in Devon.
