Wendi Deng, 42-year-old wife of octogenarian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, saved the day Tuesday as she swatted a shaving cream pie away from a would-be assailant who had intended to hit her husband with it.
According to the Seattle Times, Deng had a seat behind Murdoch, who was also seated next to his son James. Her quick thinking and reflexes meant the pie merely skimmed Murdoch’s shoulder instead of hitting him in the face.
Murdoch appeared before a committee of British Parliament to answer questions related to the phone hacking scandal. It’s alleged that the News Corp. tabloid News of the World hired private detectives to hack into phones and tamper with voice mails belonging to crime victims, victims of terrorist attacks, celebrities and politicians, among others.
The Seattle Times reported that a Wall Street Journal profile from 2000 indicated that Deng came to the U.S. from Guangzhou, China. She attended Yale and ultimately returned to China, working for Hong Kong’s Start TV. Deng and Murdoch married in 1999, according to Reuters, and the pair has two children. Most recently, Deng was a producer of the 2011 film “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,”
She does not have a title within her husband’s News Corp. empire like his grown children do, according to Reuters, however it’s believed that she fought to obtain voting rights in the family trust for her children with Murdoch.
