Forget affluenza. Where I come from, a (usually white male) trust-funder with a huge sense of entitlement is a Third Baser — a guy who thinks he’s hit a triple when he was just born on third base.
And hell hath no fury like a bottomless-wallet Third Baser scorned. Just ask Sofía Vergara, whose ex will stop at nothing to protect the embryos the two froze while together — including making a right-to-life movie version of Roe v. Wade. It’s just his latest expensive, vengeful strike against her.
The “Modern Family” actress dated socialite Nick Loeb — now 43 and the scion of the Loeb and Lehman banking dynasties — from 2010-2014. During that time, the couple fertilized and froze two embryos for future gestation.
But life got in the way of babies. Vergara’s Hollywood career skyrocketed and Loeb started shilling hot-dog toppings called Onion Crunch — and reveling in the attention he got by being Vergara’s plus-one, something he hadn’t received growing up. Loeb admitted in a New York Times op-ed, “My father . . . was not around much, as work and travel left little time for parenting. It fell to my Irish Catholic nanny, Renee, to raise me.”
Loeb also, according to people who know him, is “very arrogant” and “likes to get his way.”
So it must have been like a kick in the gut when Vergara dumped him and married “True Blood” star Joe Manganiello, leaving the future of the embryos in question.
“Nick doesn’t like to be told no,” said an old friend of Loeb’s. “He was always egocentric, arrogant and self-centered.”
“[Nick] is used to people doing things for him,” said his friend of two decades, Ivy Supersonic. “He comes from a certain kind of background . . . and I can only put up with so much before I have to leave.”
The first old friend called the trust-funder a real-life “Arthur.”
“He had the money to help make himself famous but was always a little bit sad,” she said. “He’d take everybody out and pay for everything. He was kind of a showoff — a rich kid with no real friends but he liked attention.”
Loeb got plenty of it when he sued for custody of the embryos in December 2016, despite having signed a contract stating he had no right to use them without Vergara’s consent. As he wrote in the Times, “A woman is entitled to bring a pregnancy to term even if the man objects. Shouldn’t a man . . . be [able] to bring his embryos to term even if the woman objects?”
Vergara went on Howard Stern’s radio show and shot back, claiming it would be irresponsible to bring babies into the world under such circumstances: “A child needs a loving relationship of parents who . . . don’t hate each other.” She added that she couldn’t imagine bringing kids into a world where everything is already set up against them.
A California judge ruled that, in order for the suit to continue, Loeb would have to disclose the names of two exes who had had abortions — effectively shutting it down when Loeb refused.
But Loeb doubled down and attempted to move the case to Louisiana — a state where he’d never lived, but seemingly felt might be more friendly to his cause. He was turned down when the courts deemed him, Vergara and the embryos citizens of California. But he dug in and purchased a run-down home in Plaquemines Parish, a deeply conservative area of the state, in an attempt to establish residency — as well as, according to an e-mail he sent me, becoming a “reserve deputy sheriff.”
He then put into production his self-funded “Roe v. Wade” movie, casting conservatives including Jon Voight and Stacey Dash.
According to a copy of the script — written by Loeb — obtained by the Daily Beast, the movie contains graphic scenes featuring “buckets” of fetuses. It also apparently frames the reproductive-rights movement as an elaborate racist conspiracy theory and, bizarrely, has anti-Semitic overtones. (Loeb’s family is of German Jewish heritage.) Abortion-rights activists Lawrence Lader and Betty Friedan, the Daily Beast reported, are “depicted as a shady cabal of rich lefty Jews who meet in exotic locations like St. Croix and the Russian Tea Room to boast about the money they’re raking in through abortions.”
Some in Loeb’s social set say his move to the far right has more to do with being jilted by Vergara rather than any long-held belief. (Despite those two exes having had abortions after getting pregnant by him, Loeb says he has been anti-abortion since his 20s.)
“He is obsessed with Sofía,” said the old friend. “[And] he’s using [the embryo battle and the movie] to promote himself.”
“The movie came about because of his case,” said Supersonic. “And he has the money and [the Roman Catholic] Church behind him.”
Supersonic, who was at a recent shoot for the film at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, added, “He feels those embryos are his children.”
(Cathy Allyn, a producer on the film, said, “I’m not sure how a court case that legalized abortion in 1973 . . . has anything to do with an embryo case.”)
Loeb said, “I am . . . happy for Sofía that she finally found someone to make her happy. I wanted a family, something that she wasn’t ready for, so I moved on.”
But it sure doesn’t seem like he has.
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