Alex Fevola has once again discussed husband Brendan Fevola’s affair with a then-19-year-old Lara Bingle, saying she doesn’t blame the model for the indiscretion.
WATCH: Mia Fevola pokes fun at her dad on TikTok
Speaking to Mia Freedman about the 2006 scandal on the No Filter podcast, Alex was adamant that she held no resentment toward Lara, who is now married to Avatar star Sam Worthington.
“To be clear, the fault [of the affair] lay 100 per cent with Brendan. He was the one who was married and in the relationship,” Alex, 44, told Mia.
“It went down a path that was really very traumatic for me at the time. But I think that what I went through as a young woman really set me up and held me in good stead to be able to deal with things a lot better,” she added.
Brendan, who was 26 at the time and playing professional AFL, and Lara had reportedly met on The Footy Show and allegedly hung out in Melbourne a few times before their liaison was exposed.
Speaking of the tumultuous period, Alex revealed that the worst part of the entire ordeal was being made to feel like a “joke” as the media went wild with the news of the affair between the AFL star and the youthful star.
“I think that was probably the hardest part of all of it. It was as though we were just a joke,” Alex said. “It was so heartbreaking to me and my family, my children. And yet everybody in the media were making jokes and just making fun of us in general.”
In a new book released by the Instagram star, titled Silver Linings, the mum-of-four revealed she “just knew” something was going on between her husband and the “young blonde model” after they met on The Footy Show’s end of year dance review at the show’s 2006 Grand Final episode at Rod Laver Arena.
“I felt a twinge of doubt. It was at that moment my heart sank. I felt sick,” Alex wrote of seeing the Tourism Australia model miming a Pussycat Dolls song after Brendan’s performance.
“I felt insane even saying it but I knew it was true. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. One of the reasons I felt this was because I knew Brendan very well and he’d mentioned every other person that was featuring on [The Footy Show], but he had never mentioned her. I knew exactly why.
“It all made sense; the underlying self-doubt I’d been feeling, the distance. In a split second, the dread set in, that horrible gut-wrenching feeling knowing my life was about to become very complicated.”
She also previously detailed how she confronted Lara over the phone after discovering a voicemail on Brendan’s phone.
“I said, ‘It’s Alex Fevola, Brendan’s wife. Why are you doing this?’,” she wrote. “She was silent.”
“I asked again, ‘How could you do this? You know he’s married and we’ve just had a baby.’
“There was a pause and then she hung up.
“That was it. I never called back; I had all the confirmation I needed.”
And while Brendan and Alex briefly split, the pair would go on to rekindle their romance in 2016, and now share three daughters together: Leni, 15, Lulu, 11, and Tobi, three, as well as Mia, 22, from Alex’s previous relationship.
Meanwhile, Lara has moved on with her husband Sam, with whom she shares sons Rocket, Racer and River.
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