This article originally ran on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In the first season of Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life,” Julia Haart had a loving husband, a thriving career and a family that seemed to deftly navigate varying levels of Jewish observance.
Season 2 will tell a different story.
Over the last 48 hours, Haart was fired from Elite World Group, the fashion company where she became co-CEO in 2019; filed for divorce from her husband of two years, co-CEO Silvio Scaglia Haart; and, alleging abuse, sought a restraining order against him, according to multiple celebrity news outlets.
In the petition for a restraining order, according to Page Six, Haart said that Scaglia Haart, who took her chosen last name when they married, had demonstrated “increasingly volatile, abusive and unhinged” behavior in recent weeks and also prevented her four children from having access to their shared home. Haart has homes in Manhattan and eastern Long Island.
Her children, who range from 15 to 28, were born while Haart lived in an Orthodox Jewish community. One of them, teenager Aron, attends a Jewish day school and maintains a social media profile dedicated to Jewish observance and Torah study.
“I hate Shabbos [the Sabbath] and I don’t want it in my house,” Scaglia Haart said, according to Haart’s petition.
Haart’s departure from the Orthodox community where she was raised, which she characterized as tightly controlling, and her rapid ascent in the world of fashion were the focus of the first season of “My Unorthodox Life,” which aired last July. The second season began taping last week, according to Haart’s Instagram account.
Page Six reported that Haart’s firing took place with cameras rolling and that Scaglia Haart had refused to participate in the season’s filming.
Also not appearing in the second season: Ben Weinstein, who had been married to Haart’s oldest daughter Batsheva. The couple announced their split in November, saying that their marriage at a young age, reflecting the norms of their Orthodox community, had been a strain. Weinstein told his social media followers recently that he had decided against participating in the show.
Haart’s younger daughter, Miriam, appears to be luckier in love. A senior at Stanford University, she revealed last July, shortly after her family vaulted into public view, that she was in a relationship with a Swedish woman named Nathalie Ulander. She visited Ulander’s family in Sweden late last year and this week posted pictures of them together at Miriam Haart’s 22nd birthday party in New York City.
Haart’s memoir, “Brazen,” which she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last year would include more details than the show did about her unlikely career trajectory, is due out in April.
