The late country singer Naomi Judd’s widow, Larry Strickland, has confirmed the truth behind a story that wouldn’t feel out of place in a country song.
On Saturday, during the first part of the Lifetime docuseries The Judd Family: Truth Be Told, Strickland admitted that the “Girls Night Out” singer once shot a gun at him after discovering that he was cheating on her.
The episode featured a voiceover of Judd’s 1993 memoir, Love Can Build a Bridge, where she was recalling how “wildly, madly, passionately in love,” she and Strickland were with each other, but how he was also never home.
Then one day in the 1980s, a woman called their home stating how much she “loved and missed” Strickland. When he arrived, he found Judd ripping up photos of the two of them while also throwing his things into a garbage bag.
At one point during the episode, Strickland is watching a scene from the movie Love Can Build a Bridge, where the actor playing Judd shoots the actor playing himself after discovering he cheated on her.
After watching the scene, he confirmed that the event wasn’t made up.
“Well, it really happened,” he said. “That’s all I can say. That’s all I’m gonna say. It happened.”
Judd and Strickland met in 1979 and got married 10 years later. They were together for 33 years before Judd died from suicide in 2022, when she was 76 years old.
During another portion of the docuseries, one of Judd’s daughters, Wynonna, revealed her mother’s suicide could partially be attributed to “generational trauma.”
“One of the reasons I have decided that Mom left this world is because of trauma, generational trauma, family stuff that never got healed or fixed,” she said. As her mother was growing up, Judd experienced a mother who was constantly judging her, while juggling the death of her younger brother, who had Hodgkin lymphoma, in addition to becoming a teen mom.
Wynonna said being close with her mom was a “blessing and a burden,” noting that she felt “responsible for making her feel better.”
“As a child, she did not get what she needed,” Wynonna said. “That is a fact.”
She explained that she was “the adult” in their relationship and wasn’t “allowed to be a child.”
“I’ve loved her more than I’ve loved myself, but mother was both in love with me and terrified of me because I represented what she didn’t know and couldn’t control,” Wynonna said.
The Judd Family: Truth Be Told airs on Lifetime on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET.
If you are based in the U.S., and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The Helpline is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.
