Phil Collins’ ex-wife says she was ‘trapped in a golden cage’ when she stayed with pop star

Phil Collins’ ex-wife has said she felt like she was ‘trapped in a golden cage’ when she was staying with the pop star while he fell into an alcohol-fuelled depression.

Orianne Cevey, 47, secretly married her new husband Thomas Bates, 31, in August 2020.

In January this year, Orianne moved out of Phil’s Miami mansion with her new husband after they paid $5.5m for the sprawling six-bed property in Fort Lauderdale before Christmas.

The 47-year-old says she decided to elope and marry Thomas Bates after becoming lonely last year. 

She told the Sun: ‘I felt like I was trapped in a golden cage. When someone’s depressed, it’s hard to help them out.

‘As much as you love them, why would you keep it up? After years, you get fed up. ‘Phil didn’t take care of himself.

Orianne Cevey has claimed she felt like she was ‘trapped in a golden cage’ when staying with ex-husband Phil Collins at their Miami mansion. Pictured: The couple pictured in 2016

‘If he wasn’t taking care of himself, you can imagine he wasn’t taking care of me.

‘It is hard. You feel lonely and you feel like you don’t have anybody you can talk to. I was super-sad and super-unhappy.’

She told the newspaper Collins drank alcohol all day and refused to go out and see friends and that she was staying in a separate room, eventually beginning to see other men.

Collins tried to have his ex-wife kicked out last October after finding out that she secretly remarried and moved Bates, an aspiring musician 38 years his junior, into the $40m home.

Orianne hit back, however, refusing to leave and claiming she was entitled to half its value under a ‘verbal cohabitation agreement’.

Her counterclaim for $20m is yet to be go to trial but in the meantime the two sides agreed a deal where she could stay until late January, giving her time to find a new residence for herself and Phil’s youngest sons, Matthew and Nicholas.

Phil Collins

Orianne Cevey and Thomas Bates

Orianne Cevey married husband Thomas Bates (right) in August last year after she says she began to feel lonely when ex Collins (left) would drink all day and refuse to see his friends 

That was a rare moment of compromise between the former couple, who divorced in 2006 but reconciled and lived together in Miami from 2016 to 2019.

The legal battle has otherwise been bitterly contested with Orianne and her attorneys angering a Miami judge by including a slew of humiliating personal remarks about the drummer’s hygiene and sexual performance in her filings, which she was ordered to remove.

Collin’s attorneys hit back by ridiculing Orianne’s claims to have a crippling spinal condition that requires hours of daily therapy, questioning how she could post photos of herself doing a boxing fitness class and riding a jet ski while insisting that she couldn’t sit still long enough for a deposition.

The former flames married in 1999 and had sons Nicholas, 19, and Matthew, 15, before splitting seven years later.

Despite agreeing to a record $47m divorce settlement they surprised the world in 2016 when they announced they were back together and living in the Miami home, which Collins purchased through an LLC.

However the relationship ended, seemingly for good, when he discovered Orianne had ‘secretly’ married Bates in Las Vegas on August 2.

The pair married in 1999 and had sons Nicholas, 19, and Matthew, 15, before splitting seven years later

The pair married in 1999 and had sons Nicholas, 19, and Matthew, 15, before splitting seven years later

According to court filings, the Against All Odds crooner left in a hurry for Switzerland and gave the couple until October 12 to pack their bags and move so he could put the plush property up for sale.

When they failed to leave, Collins sued Orianne for unlawful detainer and forcible entry, accusing the pair of hiring armed guards, covering over security cameras and changing alarm codes to seize the house ‘by a show of force.’

The newlyweds hit back with their own filing, dismissing the allegations as ‘nothing more than a retaliation’ to the new marriage and a ‘shameful story’ that Collins had ‘fabricated’.

Orianne argues that she surrendered a $20m stake in her previous Miami home by getting a ‘quickie divorce’ from her previous husband, Charles Mejjati.

In further filings – now struck from the record – she portrayed Collins as a washed-up has-been who relied on booze and painkillers.

The In the Air Tonight crooner was ‘usually drunk by mid-morning’, her attorneys alleged, to the point that Collins would fall over and injure himself before checking into the hospital under an alias.

The filing provoked an immediate rebuttal from the Collins camp, who described it as ‘a litany of demonstrably false, immaterial, impertinent, scandalous and scurrilous allegations which have nothing to do with the legal claims in this case.’

Judge Spencer Eig agreed, striking the humiliating allegations from the record and warning Orianne that her $20m counterclaim would be thrown out if she repeated them.