Susan Sarandon’s daughter, Eva Amurri, is in a great place, but it took going through some difficult times to get there.
The actress and Happily Eva After lifestyle blogger was facing a divorce while pregnant with her third child in 2020, so she had no choice but to kick her goals into high gear.
“I learned the internet basically, which is kind of a joke and kind of not, because I had absolutely no fluency at all in anything online-related. And so I built that brand and then my income from that brand became much more crucial to me once I got divorced,” Amurri, 40, told People in an interview published on Friday, August 1, referencing her split from former soccer player Kyle Martino.
Their divorce was finalized a month and a half before they welcomed son Mateo, now 5, in March 2020. They also share daughter Marlowe, 10, and son Major, 8.
“I was a single mom, and I had a new baby, because lest we forget, I got separated when I was three months pregnant, divorced when I was eight months pregnant, in the courthouse with the belly like this,” she recalled.
“You don’t get married and have kids expecting to get divorced,” Amurri added, “but I was lucky that I had that [income from content creation] at that time. And yeah, I’m somebody who always wants to be learning and evolving.”
Amurri has continued to evolve as she decided to take a step back from acting to focus on her marketing skills and interest in interior design.
“I was a newly single mom and it was a pandemic. I had a newborn baby and I was like, ‘Oh God, I need to work.’ So I took on some clients in a different capacity,” the Middle of Nowhere star told People.
That’s when she reconnected with builder Chris O’Dell, whom she actually worked with while renovating her home with Martino, 44. Amurri and O’Dell are now flipping a property in Connecticut together — and documenting their journey in a new YouTube home renovation series, The Westport Project.
“Because I was an actress for 15 years, I thought, ‘Why don’t we do a show about this? And we can partner with brands and we can kind of show people how a home gets built,” she explained.
She is starring in, directing and producing the show, which she said is different from other home renovation series she’s seen.
“What’s frustrating or strange about a typical home renovation show on a streaming network or cable is that it comes out a year after the house is built,” she told People. “And I really wanted to show this in real time. I wanted to get people excited about this house.”
New episodes of the series come out weekly on her Happily Eva After Youtube page.
“Part reality show, part home-renovation journey, The Westport Project is the new web series you’ll love to follow along with,” the description reads.
Aside from her new venture, Amurri is also focused on building a life with husband Ian Hock, whom she married in June 2024 — with Sarandon, 78, and stepdad Tim Robbins by her side.
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“We didn’t start dating for a little while, but yeah, we met when I was out-to-here pregnant, too,” she added of her chef husband, “which is wild.”