Tori Spelling Reveals the Pet Name She Keeps Calling Her Ex Dean McDermott — Including in Front of His Girlfriend

Tori Spelling still has a place in her heart for Dean McDermott.

The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, 51, shared how her dynamic with her ex has changed after filing for divorce one year ago. While they no longer call each other husband and wife, she said on the March 11 episode of her misSPELLING podcast that they were actually together to put their kids to bed the night before.

"[I’m a] single mom of five now, co-parenting very well with my ex, Dean, which I gotta say, it is super challenging,” she explained. “I don't know if anyone has gone through this, but I've never called him Dean. I've called him babe for twenty years. So it is super hard to remind myself that, ‘Oh, okay. You guys aren't together anymore.’”

She continued: “So when we're doing kid drop off and switcheroos and he's over helping, I'm like, ‘Oh, babe.’ And I'm thinking to myself, ‘Is that okay? I just called him babe.’ And he's cool with it.”

The only issue with her sweet pet name for McDermott is that he’s someone else’s “babe” now, too.

“It has slipped a couple times in front of his girlfriend, Lily, who I adore,” Spelling revealed. “We have a great relationship. And I'm just like, ‘Oh, old habits die hard.’ But to me, it's like, that's his name. Like, it's not d e a n. It's b a b e. It's babe!”

McDermott announced his split from Spelling in June 2023 before the actress officially filed for divorce in March 2024. During that time, McDermott said he took responsibility for the downfall of their marriage.

"All Tori's ever done to this day is want me to be happy and healthy and I inflicted a lot of damage and pain on that woman," he told the Daily Mail. "It's going to be living the rest of my life making amends because I took something that was really beautiful and I just tore it down year after year, day after day."

They met in 2005 while filming the TV movie Mind Over Murder in Canada, but at the time, both were married to other people: McDermott to Mary Jo Eustace and Spelling to Charlie Shanian.

Soon after, they split from their partners and got married in May 2006. The following year, they welcomed their first child, son Liam, and began documenting their lives on their first reality television series, Tori & Dean: Inn Love. 

They went on to have five children — the fifth was born in 2017 — but they faced rumors of trouble in their marriage for years in between. In 2013, however, the couple's then-reality show, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, got canceled, and at the end of the year, McDermott cheated on Spelling.

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At the beginning of 2014, McDermott told PEOPLE that he checked himself into rehab to "address some health and personal issues." They also addressed the infidelity on the family's new reality show, True Tori.

"I feel shame. I've never felt shame before," McDermott said of his transgressions. "You were at a Christmas event, and I was f------ around. That's disgusting. That's disgusting."

Spelling later revealed that the two were working through their issues. "It's something that's going to take time to get through," she told PEOPLE.

McDermott re-proposed to Spelling in 2016, and despite financial troubles that same year, Spelling declared that they had “rebuilt” the relationship. The years that followed consisted of several calls to the police and revelations about the two drifting apart before they ultimately went their separate ways in 2023.