Willie Nelson Is a Bombshell: Country Music Icon’s New Docuseries Reveals SHOCKING Affairs, ‘Fork Fight’ With First Wife, Suicide Attempts, Bankruptcy Battle and More

Willie Nelson’s new documentary is sure to please fans, as the country music icon drops quite a few bombshells.

Fresh off his 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl, Nelson takes a candid look back at the highs and lows of his incredible life in the four-episode series debuting on Paramount+.

Featuring numerous interviews with musicians, family members, band members and Nelson experts, the series explores the myth behind the Texas native who became a Grammy-winning American legend.

“Daddy’s been homeless, his house burned down, he’s been through four marriages, he’s been up and down, he’s broke, he’s [fought] the tax authorities, he has lost a child… that is what makes him inspiring to me: his resilience in the face of adversity,” Willie’s 34-year-old son Lukas Nelson summarizes in the docuseries.

Below are the most stunning revelations from Willie Nelson and Family.

Fork fight with his first wife

Willie immediately fell in love with his first wife, Martha Jewel Matthews, when he met her in 1952 while she was working at a fast food restaurant.

“She was a dark-haired beauty, a full-blooded Cherokee,” Willie says in the series, per People. “Her eyes set my soul on fire, and her name was Martha Jewel.”

Although Wille was 19 and Martha 16, the couple soon married.

“My mother didn’t want me to get married because I was as young as I was, so we just eloped,” Martha, who died of liver failure in 1989, says in a voiceover.

Willie said of their romance: “We had a lot of fun together, but we argued, and we both drank a lot at the time.

“We got into an argument one morning, and she picked up this fork, threw it across the table, and it got stuck in my side. It sounded like a tuning fork.”

Willie’s wife discovers affair through his mistress’s pregnancy law

Willie was still married to second wife Shirley Collie when a hospital bill arrived at their Tennessee home relating to Connie Nelson’s birth of Paula Nelson in October 1969.

“Shirley wanted to know who the hell Connie Nelson was,” Willie says.

“The truth is Connie [Koepke] had been my girlfriend for several years before I got pregnant.’

Daughter Lana added: ‘[Shirley] I had no idea there was a Connie. She had no idea there was a baby until she got the hospital bill. That’s how she discovered Connie. That’s how I met Connie.”

Connie says that at that moment, “the furthest thing from my mind was getting pregnant and telling my mom and dad.”

“Anyway, it happened. Honestly, I was next, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, but Shirley wasn’t their mother, she was gone. I had so much contact with those children. I loved those kids. They have all become my children too.’

A ‘Shoot-out’ with his ex-son-in-law

The story of how Martha met Willie’s third wife Connie Koepke has the suspense of a soap opera.

Willie was still married to second wife Shirley Collie when a hospital bill related to Paula Nelson’s birth in October 1969 arrived at their Tennessee home.

Connie, who had met Willie on tour, was the mother.

While Martha was visiting Willie in Tennessee, an incident involving their daughter Lana and her abusive husband occurred, reaching a point where the man began shooting at the house.

“It really pissed me off when he beat her up, so I went over and smacked him around a little bit,” Willie says in the series. ‘I told him never to do that again. Then he came back and took pictures of the house.”

Willie grabbed his own gun and a band member and started shooting at Lana’s husband’s car.

In the second episode of the series, Connie remembers encountering Martha in the middle of the gunfight.

“I just grabbed her by the skirt, dragged her downstairs and said, ‘Get down, you’re going to get killed!’ That’s how I met Martha.’

Multiple suicide attempts

Willie talks candidly about his heavy drinking days in the 1960s, when he lived in Nashville with Martha and their three children Lana, Susie and Billy.

“She and I argued more than ever, and I started drinking more than ever,” Willie says of his relationship with Martha.

‘I got drunk every night and went home with someone different every night. [I was] slowly self-destructing. I really didn’t care.’

“I tried to kill myself a few times during my drinking days,” he continues.

‘One time, in the middle of winter, I was so focused on myself that I lay down in the middle of the street hoping a car would run over me. No luck. I had to get up and keep trying to figure out how to make a living.”

Willie refused to file for bankruptcy even though he owed $32 million to the IRS

Willie discovered that he owed $32 million in income taxes to the IRS in 1990.

“It seemed like a lot of money, but it was a challenge,” Willie says.

The star said he was advised to file for bankruptcy, but he refused as he didn’t want to cheat anyone out of money.

“That wasn’t my plan at all,” he says. “It has never been my intention, and I never will, for the people I owe debts to be robbed of their money.”

He was also in the middle of his marriage to makeup artist Anne D’Angelo.

“The lawyer said, ‘Do you know he has $32 million in debt and 19 of it will be yours?’ I thought, ‘Yeah, but I’m not here for the money anyway,'” D’Angelo recalls.

‘I already had my own, it went well, how can I help? I know he seemed super calm, but inside he wasn’t that calm. We had two kids – it was super, super stressful. They have seized our house. All four of us lived in this small apartment because Micah was a baby. It was frustrating.’

Willie ‘didn’t talk’ about his son’s suicide

In 1991, Willie experienced the tragic loss of his son Billy, who committed suicide at the age of 33.

Willie’s daughter Lana said her brother Billy had mental health issues such as depression, adding: ‘He didn’t want to be depressed, he didn’t want to be that guy.

‘He tried very hard, and he succeeded.’

Daughter Paula said, “He was a really great guy, but it’s hard to be in Texas when your dad is Willie Nelson. You can’t escape it…

‘When Billy died, it was terribly hard [Willie]– on all of us. It was very difficult for him because that was his first son.’

Willie’s sister Bobbie added: ‘It’s not like we talked about our grief at length – that’s not Willie’s way. We didn’t have to talk about it. We know.’