Who Is the Murdoch Family? All About the RealLife People Who Inspired "Succession" Lynsey Eidell, Nicole PomaricoSeptember 9, 2025 at 3:00 PM 1 David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and his adult children inspired the HBO series Succession Murdoch has been married ...
- - Who Is the Murdoch Family? All About the Real-Life People Who Inspired "Succession"
Lynsey Eidell, Nicole PomaricoSeptember 9, 2025 at 3:00 PM
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David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and his adult children inspired the HBO series Succession
Murdoch has been married five times and has six children
In September 2025, the family announced that son Lachlan had reached a deal to buy out his siblings' shares in the empire
Following a yearslong battle, the Murdoch family has finally decided who will be media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's successor.
On Sept. 8, 2025, the Murdoch family announced that older son Lachlan had completed an agreement to control their conservative media empire when patriarch Rupert — who is now in his 90s — dies, according to The New York Times. The deal is reportedly valued at $3.3 billion.
Rupert has been married five times and has six children with three of his wives: Prudence (with his first wife Patricia Booker); Elisabeth, Lachlan and James (with his second wife Anna Torv); and Chloe and Grace (with his third wife, Wendi Deng). After divorcing his fourth wife, Jerry Hall, in August 2022, the media tycoon announced his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith on March 20, 2023 (the pair called off their engagement just a few weeks later). He wed for the fifth time on June 1, 2024, to Elena Zhukova, a retired scientist.
Lachlan first began running the family business in September 2023, when Rupert stepped down as chairman of Fox Corp. and News Corp. The family's empire and dynamics are what inspired the popular HBO series Succession, with the Roy family based on the Murdochs.
After stepping down as chairman, Rupert requested that the Murdoch family trust, which dates back to 1999, be amended to give Lachlan total control and voting power without his siblings' interference upon his death. As a result, a fierce court battle between Rupert and three of his children — Prudence, Elisabeth and James — began.
When the family announced that the legal battle had come to an end over a year later in September 2025, Lachlan was confirmed to take over, with the other three siblings receiving $1.1 billion each for all their shares in the empire. A new Murdoch family trust will be created for Lachlan and younger sisters Grace and Chloe, and will remain active until 2050, per The New York Times.
From multiple marriages to media moves and many grandchildren, here's everything to know about the powerful Murdoch family and their complicated dynamics.
Rupert Murdoch
Daniele Venturelli/WireImage Rupert Murdoch
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, in Australia. His business empire began when he was just 22 years old and his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, unexpectedly died. Upon his death, Rupert inherited a small Australian newspaper, The News, in 1952.
"My motives were to create a great paper," Rupert recalled to The Australian in 2014. "It was my father's dream. He talked to me about this as a teenager."
From there, Rupert spent much of the 1950s and '60s expanding his newspaper business, acquiring papers throughout Australia and New Zealand. By the mid-1970s, he had purchased major newspapers in both the United Kingdom and the United States, including News of the World, The Sun, the San Antonio Express-News and the New York Post.
"Why am I in papers? I just love it," he told The Village Voice shortly after purchasing the Post.
But Rupert didn't limit himself to just newspapers. Over the following decades, he grew News Corporation to include television, film and publishing companies — including book publisher HarperCollins, film studio Twentieth Century Fox and The Wall Street Journal. By 2009, it was one of the largest media companies in the world, according to Fortune.
However, his 70-plus years in the media industry were not without controversy. In 2011, his British tabloid News of the World was shut down following a phone-hacking scandal, which led to Rupert facing police and government investigations in both Britain and the U.S. In 2016, Rupert's network Fox News was plagued by sexual harassment claims, resulting in CEO Roger Ailes stepping down and Rupert taking over as chairman and CEO.
In his personal life, Rupert has been married five times. His first marriage came in 1956 to Patricia Booker, an airline hostess from Adelaide, Australia. They had one child (Prudence) and were divorced by 1967. The same year, he wed Anna Torv, a journalist at his Sydney newspaper The Daily Mirror. The couple were married for more than 30 years and had three children: Elisabeth, Lachlan and James. Rupert and Anna divorced in 1999. His third wife was Wendi Deng; they were married from 1999 to 2013 and had two daughters, Grace and Chloe.
Murdorch married for the fourth time in March 2016 to supermodel Jerry Hall. They were married for six years and divorced in August 2022.
"They remain good friends and wish each other the best for the future," Rupert's attorney, Robert S. Cohen, and Hall's attorney, Judith L. Poller, said in a statement. According to Vanity Fair, the divorce settlement specifically stated that Hall couldn't provide story ideas to the writers on Succession.
He was later engaged to former police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith. However, they split just weeks later, with a source close to Rupert telling PEOPLE in April 2023 that they had called off their engagement.
In June 2024, Rupert wed Elena Zhukova, a retired scientist whom he reportedly met through his third wife, Deng. The ceremony reportedly took place at Rupert's California vineyard and estate, Moraga.
Prudence MacLeod
Alan Davidson/Shutterstock Prudence Macleod
Prudence Murdoch MacLeod, or Prue, is Rupert's eldest child — and only child from his first marriage to Booker. She was born in 1958 in Australia but when her parents divorced, Prue requested to live with her father and his new wife, Anna Torv, claims an excerpt from the 2008 book by Michael Wolff, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, which was published in Vanity Fair. She moved with them to London and later New York, where she attended high school.
Prue briefly worked for one of her father's papers, News of the World, but hasn't always gotten along with him. After a 1997 press conference, where Rupert referred to his "three children" (omitting Prue), the two had "the biggest row I've ever had," she shared in one of her only public interviews.
"I rang up, I screamed at him, I hung up. He was very upset," she continued. "He then sent the biggest bunch of flowers — it was bigger than a sofa — and two clementine trees."
The eldest Murdoch child has been married twice: First, in 1986, to Crispin Odey, a London hedge fund manager. They divorced a year later in 1987. She then married Alasdair MacLeod in 1989, who went on to work for Rupert despite Prudence's disapproval, per Wolff.
Prudence and Alasdair live in Sydney and have three children: James, Angus and Clementine.
Elisabeth Murdoch
Jeff Spicer/Getty Elisabeth Murdoch
Rupert's first child with his second wife, Anna, is daughter Elisabeth. Born on Aug. 22, 1968, in Sydney, Australia, she was reportedly named after her grandmother — Rupert's mother — Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. Elisabeth spent her childhood growing up in N.Y.C., minus a brief stint at boarding school in Australia, per Wolff's book.
After attending Vassar College, Elisabeth held a series of jobs within her father's company, including managing director at BSkyB, the British broadcasting company. But she also had ventures of her own: First owning a pair of NBC-affiliate stations in California and later, in 2001, launching an independent television company called Shine, which produced popular reality shows like The Biggest Loser and MasterChef.
"I wanted my own business. I felt I could achieve a great deal even if it was bloody scary at the time," she told The Guardian in March 2010.
Shine was purchased by her father's News Corporation in 2011 in a deal worth $674 million, according to Variety. Elisabeth took a seat on the board at News Corp. following the acquisition, but in 2019, she branched out on her own again with the launch of Sister, an entertainment production company, per the Los Angeles Times. The production company is responsible for shows including HBO's Chernobyl and the BBC drama Broadchurch.
"You'd love your parents to be proud of you," she told The New Yorker in December 2012. "Each time I tried to work in his company, he wasn't impressed. I realized I had to just go and be myself."
In her personal life, Elisabeth has been married three times and has four children. Her first marriage was to fellow Vassar graduate Elkin Pianim in 1993, per The New York Times; the couple had two daughters, Cornelia and Anna.
After their divorce in 1998, she wed British PR executive Matthew Freud in 2001. They also had two children together — Charlotte and Samson — and divorced in 2014. In 2017, Elisabeth married for a third time to artist Keith Tyson.
Lachlan Murdoch
Taylor Hill/Getty Lachlan Murdoch
Rupert welcomed his first son with Anna, Lachlan, on Sept. 8, 1971, in London. He grew up in N.Y.C. and attended a variety of private schools before heading to Princeton University, where he studied philosophy. Right away, he began to work for his father, managing newspapers in Australia and the U.S. before being named the deputy chief operating officer at News Corp. in 2000.
But similar to his big sister Elisabeth, Lachlan also wanted to prove himself outside of the family business. In 2005, he left News Corp. and moved to Australia to launch his own firm, Illyria, which invested in failing radio stations and revived them.
"In life, you back yourself," Lachlan told Business Insider in May 2021 about his decision to step out on his own. "Can you separate from the company and the broader family and a lot of your colleagues and go out on your own and build your own business and take a lot of risk?"
He continued, "It gives you a lot of confidence … that you succeeded outside the company you grew up in."
In 2014, Lachlan returned to the family business as the non-executive co-chairman of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, according to Bloomberg. A year later, he became the executive chairman at 21st Century Fox, and by 2019, he was named the chairman and CEO at Fox, per The Hollywood Reporter.
When Lachlan was announced as his father's successor in September 2023, he thanked Rupert in a media statement, saying, "We thank him for his vision and his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination and the enduring legacy he leaves at the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted."
He was confirmed to remain in control of the family's media empire in September 2025, and is part of a new family trust that expires in 2050.
Lachlan has been married to Australian model Sarah O'Hare since 1998. They have since welcomed three children: sons Kalan and Aidan and daughter Aerin.
James Murdoch
Bryan Bedder/Getty James Murdoch
James Murdoch, Rupert's third child with Anna and fourth overall, had a more rebellious start to his career than his older siblings. Born on Dec. 13, 1972, in London, James attended Harvard University before dropping out to launch his own hip-hop record label called Rawkus Records, per Wolff's book. The label counted Mos Def and Eminem as some of its artists before being acquired by News Corp. in 1998, per the BBC.
Following that acquisition, James would spend the next two-plus decades working for his father, eventually becoming deputy COO of News Corp. in 2011 and CEO of 21st Century Fox in 2015. But by 2019, James began to remove himself from the family business — first leaving the top job at Fox when it was sold to Disney in 2019 and then publicly resigning from News Corp. in 2020.
"My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions," he said in a statement at the time, according to The New York Times.
James and his wife Kathryn, who married in 2000, run the foundation Quadrivium, which has supported causes including voter participation, democracy reform and climate change initiatives, according to The New York Times.
James is also well-known for being much more liberal than his conservative family. "We've been arguing about politics since I was a teenager," he told The New York Times about his father.
James and Kathryn are the parents of three children: daughters Anneka and Emerson, and son Walter.
Grace Murdoch
Larry Busacca/Getty Grace Murdoch
Born on Nov. 19, 2001, Grace Helen Murdoch is Rupert's first child with Wendi Deng (and his fifth overall). She grew up in N.Y.C. and attended the Brearley School, where she graduated from in June 2020, according to her Instagram. Grace graduated from Yale University in 2025, per the school.
Grace appears to have a close relationship with her billionaire father. "My favorite person," she captioned a series of photos of them together on Instagram, which has since been made private.
"I am so lucky to be your daughter," Grace wrote on her social media on his 90th birthday.
Chloe Murdoch
Andrew H Walker/WWD/Penske Media/Getty Chloe Murdoch
Rupert's youngest child (and second with Wendi) is daughter Chloe, who was born on July 17, 2003. Chloe grew up in N.Y.C. with her older sister and currently attends Stanford University.
Despite having two public figures for parents, Chloe leads a relatively private life. She has no public-facing social media accounts, only occasionally appearing on her mother's Instagram.
"You always were the cutest child, but now you are the most wonderful 18 year daughter," Wendi wrote on her 18th birthday in July 2021.
A year prior, she described Chloe as "beautiful, incredible, unique" in a separate Instagram post.
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