Entertainment
Sum 41's Deryck Whibley alleges sexual abuse by former manager in new memoir 'Walking Disaster'
Deryck Whibley
(Travis Shinn)
Deryck Whibley is ready to tell you everything.
When the Sum 41 frontman first sat down to write what would become his unflinching memoir, “Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell,” he genuinely didn’t think his life merited an autobiography. At least not compared to volumes he’d read by his rock n’ roll idols, for example, Mötley Crüe’s debauchery-packed “The Dirt.” Still, he kept writing. As the words flowed out, Whibley realized he did have something important to say about the highs and lows of his career, including alleged sexual and verbal abuse by his band’s former manager.
“I don’t look at my life as anything worth reading,” says Whibley, who is calling in from Miami where he and Sum 41 are due to perform as part of the band’s ongoing farewell world tour. “I’m just a guy who wrote some songs and had some success and went through a couple things. But then I thought, the idea of wrapping Sum 41 up [with a book] is a good way to move on from my past. I’m starting a new chapter.”
True to its title, Whibley’s book barrels in like a tornado of extreme highs and lows. There are the expected moments of rock star excess and depravity: chart-topping albums such as the 2001 punk revivalist “All Killer No Filler” and its darker 2002 follow up, “Does This Look Infected?” as well as tales of trashed hotel rooms, a night under the influence of a Japanese “mystic blue powder,” lavish celebrity-studded Hollywood parties and a whirlwind affair with Paris Hilton.
For every win, however, there is an excruciating defeat. Whibley also recounts the physical tradeoffs of band life: two herniated discs, nerve damage in his feet, a surprise bar attack in Tokyo, a debilitating panic and anxiety disorder, multiple near-death experiences, liver and kidney failure from drinking, and alcoholism. (Whibley celebrated 10 years of sobriety this spring.)
Whibley has talked about these challenges in interviews before. But there are key details about his life he’d shared only with a few people, revelations that he poured into the book. “I don’t know how to tell the real story without getting into some of this stuff, because it’s all intertwined with my life, intertwined with the music and in the band,” says Whibley. “It’s just such a big part of it.”
Throughout the pages of “Walking Disaster,” Whibley describes a fraught and frightening relationship with Sum 41’s first manager, Greig Nori, whom the singer alleges groomed and sexually and verbally abused him for years, starting when he was 16 and Nori was 34.
Nori did not respond to The Times’ multiple requests for comment.
Nori, who fronts the Canadian punk group Treble Charger, had been a hometown hero to Whibley, who in the mid-’90s was getting Sum 41 off the ground with his high school friends — guitarist Jon Marshall, who was later replaced by Dave “Brownsound” Baksh; drummer Steve “Stevo32” Jocz; and bassist Richard “Twitch” Roy, later replaced by Jason “Cone” McCaslin. As Sum 41 were playing the local underground scene, Whibley’s idea of success meant getting out of Ajax, Ontario, Canada, a working-class suburb about 30 miles east of Toronto. (Whibley’s mother was 17 when she had him, and money was always tight.) So when he sneaked backstage at a local Treble Charger show and invited Nori to one of Sum 41’s upcoming performances, he felt ecstatic that Nori handed him his phone number.
As Whibley writes in “Walking Disaster,” he couldn’t believe his good fortune that Nori, whom he knew was older, would find him cool enough to engage with. When he’d call Nori to pepper him with music- and band-related questions, they’d stay on the phone for hours, talking about their lives and families. Nori even gave Whibley and Jocz their first drinks — glittering shots of Goldschläger, Whibley writes in the book.
Nori became Whibley’s songwriting mentor — later, Sum 41’s manager. He booked the group studio sessions, invited them to parties and raves, and helped them network with industry figureheads. “Greig had one requirement to be our manager — he wanted total control,” Whibley writes in the book. “We couldn’t talk to anyone but him, because the music business is ‘full of snakes and liars’ and he was the only person we could trust.”
One night when he was 18 and intoxicated at a rave, Whibley writes, Nori asked him to come to the bathroom to drop another hit of ecstasy. Jammed together in the stall, Whibley writes, Nori grabbed his face and “passionately” kissed him. Whibley writes that he walked away stunned. He’d never thought of Nori like that before, and Nori reasoned that while he’d never experienced same-sex attraction before, “[Whibley] brought it out in him because what [they] had was so special,” according to the book.
As the weeks progressed, the book says, Nori tried to make the case to a disoriented Whibley that what they were doing was worth exploring because “so many of my rock star idols were queer. … Most people are bisexual; they’re just too afraid to admit it.” As Sum 41 grew in popularity, the band went on the road more and more. Whibley writes that he felt relief at the distance. Back home in Ajax, he writes that he attempted to end the physical encounters with Nori, as he ultimately didn’t identify as gay or bisexual. In the book, Nori grows irate in response, call Whibley homophobic and listing the myriad reasons Whibley “owed” him for helping his music career. Whibley writes how Nori would flip the script and accuse him of allowing the relationship to start.
Whibley tells The Times that he never told anyone about his relationship with Nori, who continued to claim they shared a “special connection” while pressuring Whibley into sexual relations. When Whibley began dating Avril Lavigne in 2004 (the two were married from 2006 to 2009), he writes in the book that he eventually confided in her, prompting Lavigne to exclaim, “That’s abuse! He sexually abused you.” Whibley also told his current wife of 10 years, Ariana Cooper, who reacted the same way, he says.
In the book, Whibley writes that Nori ultimately ceased instigating sexual encounters when a mutual friend learned what had happened. In the book, the friend tells Whibley and Nori that their relationship was abuse.
The sexual component to their relationship might have ended, but the alleged psychological and verbal abuse became worse, Whibley writes. Sometimes, Nori would lavish praise upon the frontman (usually when he wanted something). Other times, Whibley writes that Nori would berate him and pit the rest of the band against him, telling them that Whibley had “gone Hollywood” because of his relationship with Lavigne.
Whibley writes that Nori, who produced “Does This Look Infected?” and “Chuck,” would also insist that he be credited as a songwriter on most of Sum 41’s tracks, allegedly telling the band that the music industry would take them more seriously if they saw his name as a co-writer. (In 2018, Whibley won back the songwriting share of Sum 41’s publishing credits after filing a lawsuit against Nori.)
At one point, Whibley writes, he urged his band members to fire Nori, leaving out the personal nature of their past and focusing on alleged managerial missteps: being unreachable, failing to respond to important requests, missing opportunities and even allegedly showing up to a Sum 41 show high on ecstasy. At first, his bandmates refused to part ways with their manager, Whibley writes, but Sum 41 did eventually fire Nori after the “Chuck” album cycle in 2005.
Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 performs during the Festival d’été de Québec on Friday, July 15, 2022, in Quebec City.
(Amy Harris / Amy Harris/invision/ap)
Whibley still hasn’t told his bandmates — former and current — about his abuse allegations against Nori. He also hasn’t warned Nori about the allegations in “Walking Disaster,” though he admits that there’s a part of him, the one that used to feel emotionally manipulated, that feels like he should.
“You know, I don’t owe him anything,” he says. And yet he acknowledges that he still feels like he does. “I’ve had an inner battle, like, ‘Why do I want to tell him? Because I feel like I’m supposed to? Because he still has this thing over me?’ He controlled everything in my life, but even the rest of the guys through the band. We were all under his wing. Me more, obviously. But he was such a controlling person.”
Aside from the allegations in the book, Whibley also claims that Nori’s control extended to the band members’ relationship with their parents. “He wouldn’t let our parents know anything,” Whibley tells The Times. “He tried to keep them away all the time. Now it makes more sense. Because he was the same age as our parents, and we didn’t know that at the time. He knew they would get suspicious of the way things were running. … He would always be like, ‘You can’t have a relationship with your parents and be in a rock band. It’s not cool. It’s going to hurt your career.’ ”
After Sum 41 fired Nori, Whibley moved forward. The band went on to release four more albums between 2007 and 2019; they were nominated for a Grammy in 2012 — best hard rock/metal performance for the song “Blood in My Eyes.” In 2014, he married Cooper; the two have two young children. In 2024, he reunited with Sum 41 to release their eighth and final project, the pop-punk-metal double album “Heaven :x: Hell.”
Book cover for “Walking Disaster: My Life Through Heaven and Hell”
(courtesy of Simon and Schuster)
As Whibley neared his 35th birthday almost a decade ago, he uncomfortably realized that he was approaching the same age Nori had been when they first met back in the ‘90s. He realized the imbalance of life experience and power.
“It all became so clear,” Whibley says. “Then about a year later, the Me Too thing started happening. I started hearing stories of grooming, and it all started to make sense.”
For all the apparent transparency in “Walking Disaster,” courage was the last thing Whibley felt while writing about the worst moments of his life. He mostly felt embarrassment. “Like people are going to ridicule me and say, ‘This is your own fault,’ ” he says. “And then I got over caring about that.
A part of him felt conditioned to be ridiculed by people, because the band has been subjected to that over its career, he says.
“We’ve been counted out so many times. I automatically have this conditioning of, ‘Well, people are going to trash me. People are going to hate this.’ Even high school was like that.”
On this tour, he says, he has to remind himself every single night that people are there because they want to be here. ‘Because I am still conditioned to go out onstage feeling like I need to prove myself. I haven’t shaken that mindset yet.”
The band’s final show will be in Toronto at the end of January, and Whibley is excited to see what’s next. He’s not a big planner, though he’s always ruminating about new opportunities — not to mention he’ll finally have time to take Cooper on a proper honeymoon. “Our last show is on Jan. 30, and by Feb. 1, I’ll be like, ‘OK f—, I got no job. What am I gonna do? What is exciting me today?’ ”
Whatever Whibley ends up pursuing, he’ll do with an open heart and clear mind, he says. “I didn’t hold back,” Whibley says of “Walking Disaster.” “I kind of got to a point where I’m like, ‘I don’t care what people take away from it.’ That was the only way I could write the book. And I think having that freedom may let me be as honest as I could be.”
He ends with a wry joke, revealing a flash of the scrappy, mischievous teen with big dreams of starting a punk band with his best friends. “I remember I told my wife, ‘I feel like I could run for office at this point, because there’s nothing you could f— find on me.’ ”
Film
Project Hail Mary
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Pascal Pictures, General Admission, Lord Miller Productions
In Theaters 03.20.2026
The Oscars for the films of 2025 are this Sunday, and many of the races are tight. If I’m being honest, I’m struggling to care, in part because awards are a poor way to measure art. But mostly because Project Hail Mary is the first major studio release that’s a solid contender for Best Picture of 2026, and I’m far more stoked to see it again than I am to watch a three-hour ceremony.
Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling, Drive, Barbie) awakens alone aboard a spacecraft light-years from Earth with no memory of who he is or how he got there. As fragments of his past slowly return, he realizes he’s the sole survivor of a desperate mission to the Tau Ceti system, sent to find a way to stop a mysterious organism draining energy from the sun and threatening to wipe out life on Earth. Armed only with his scientific know-how, stubborn ingenuity and a growing understanding of the stakes, Grace races to solve an interstellar puzzle that could save humanity. Along the way, he discovers he isn’t quite as alone as he thought — forming an unlikely partnership with an alien visitor he nicknames Rocky (voiced and puppeteered by James Ortiz), whose own world is facing the same cosmic catastrophe. Together, the two forge an extraordinary friendship while tackling a problem that neither species could solve alone.
Project Hail Mary is an adaptation of the bestselling novel by Andy Weir, the author of The Martian, and it’s adapted by the same screenwriter for that film, Drew Goddard. As with The Martian, the script here stays remarkably faithful to the beloved source material, bringing a perfect mix of science, humor and heart. The shadow-drained cinematography by Greig Fraser (Dune, The Batman) is luminous and atmospheric. The Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were fired from their gig piloting Solo: A Star Wars Story, finally get the chance to prove that not only can they do live action just as well as animation, they belong among the stars. For a story that is so dependent on making hard science accessible and is predicated on the imminent destruction of the planet and the human race, Project Hail Mary manages to be a joyous crowd-pleaser that should find itself scoring with all audiences. It’s as if the cerebral majesty of 2001: A Space Odyssey were mixed with the warmth of a road trip buddy movie, and they sync together perfectly. Daniel Pemberton’s ethereal musical score is filled with such majesty that it would be worth the price of an IMAX ticket just to hear it on a great sound system, and even at 156 minutes, the pacing never lags.
Gosling is becoming one of Hollywood’s most consistently great actors, and he balances the comic and dramatic elements with equal aplomb. The presence of a practical effect for Rocky gives Gosling a stellar performer to play off of, and I’ll be very surprised if we see a more engaging character relationship all year. Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest) brings both an icy aloofness and piercing sense of humanity to the role of Eva Stratt, a Dutch scientist who is in charge of the project, and she continues to blow me away with the depth that she brings to each performance.
Project Hail Mary isn’t just a great movie; it’s a cosmic journey of epic proportions, and it’s nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece. These may be lofty words, and I know that I run the risk of being told “you built it up too high for me,” but when a movie comes along that causes me to lose myself in an all encompassing experience – and I look at the silver through the eyes of a kid who is filled with wonder and has traveled to edges of existence and back again – I’m willing to take that risk. —Patrick Gibbs
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Entertainment
Oscars host Conan O’Brien says ‘we will find the right tone’ for ceremony amid Iran war
The big question surrounding last year’s Academy Awards was whether the show would address the L.A. wildfires, which had rattled the city mere months prior.
This year, the elephant in the room is the ongoing Iran war, which like last year’s wildfires, puts a celebration like the Oscars in sharp relief. But for Conan O’Brien, balancing gravity and levity is part of his job description as host.
“My job is to always try and hit this very, very thin line between entertaining people and also acknowledging some of the realities,” O’Brien said during a Wednesday news conference with the Oscars creative team.
“It’s a dance that goes on up until the show begins,” the former talk show host said, adding that he and his team of writers are still revising material ahead of the show to ensure their content is as relevant as possible.
“Between us,” he said, referencing Oscars telecast executive producers Katy Mullan and Raj Kapoor, “we will find the right tone.”
O’Brien also during the news conference recalled Johnny Carson’s turn hosting the Oscars during the Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans, including diplomats and other personnel, were held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran from 1979 to 1981. The comedian remembered the television host parodying ABC’s “Nightline” with his joke, “It’s day 444 of the Oscars.”
“It was such a funny, topical joke that touched on something everyone was thinking about, and at the same time, got a big laugh and was unifying,” O’Brien said. “That was meaningful to me.”
Kapoor said during the news conference that the production team is putting systems in place to alleviate attendees’ safety concerns amid the tense global situation and reported threats to California.
“Every year, we monitor what’s going on in the world,” the showrunner said, adding that the ceremony has the support of the FBI and LAPD. “This show has to run like clockwork.”
He added, “Everybody that is coming to this show, that is witnessing this show, that is even a fan of the show when they’re standing outside the barricades — we want everybody to feel safe and protected and welcome.”
As for the telecast’s creative direction, the team cited “human touch” as a unifying theme — a not-so-subtle slight to AI.
“We’re celebrating human touch, human connection and what I like to call actual intelligence, as opposed to artificial,” said music director Michael Bearden. “We want to get back to the communal … and so the music will reflect that.”
That spirit of celebration will be especially tangible in the “KPop Demon Hunters” performance, Kapoor said. That performance will be complemented by a “Sinners” moment featuring Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq as well as guests Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith.
“We have this lovely story celebrating Korean culture with authentic Korean drummers and singers and even choreography,” the producer said. “So again, we’ve expanded our reach, and we’re telling these global stories, celebrating international films that have had a global impact and doing things in a really different way.”
Mullan and Kapoor closed the news conference by teasing a pair of reunions featuring cast members from “Bridesmaids” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Bridesmaids” alum Rose Byrne is nominated for a lead actress Oscar for her role in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” which marked O’Brien’s dramatic acting debut. (If Byrne wins, he said, “half that Oscar’s mine.”)
“We’re gonna have superstars, superheroes, and there is also going to be an extraterrestrial on the stage, so you can figure that one out,” Mullan said.
The 2026 Oscars will air live Sunday on ABC, with streaming available on Hulu, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV.
Reminders of Him, 2026.
Directed by Vanessa Caswill.
Starring Maika Monroe, Tyriq Withers, Rudy Pankow, Lainey Wilson, Lauren Graham, Jennifer Robertson, Zoe Kosovic, Monika Myers, Sindhyar Baloch, Bradley Whitford, Nicholas Duvernay, Jillian Walchuck, Hilary Jardine, Skye MacDonald, Rick Koy, Susan Serrao, Anne Hawthorne, Laird Reghenas, and Kevin Corey.
SYNOPSIS:
After prison, a woman attempts to reconnect with her young daughter but faces resistance from everyone except a bar owner with ties to her child. As they grow closer, she must confront her past mistakes to build a hopeful future.
Given that Maika Monroe’s just-released-from-incarceration Kenna immediately desecrates the gravesite of her love Scotty (which is unintentionally hilariously on the side of the road where a tragic car accident took his life) by stealing the wooden cross (with an inner voice muttering that he hated memorials anyway), tells another character she doesn’t like cats, and complains to someone else that all music is sad and that she doesn’t like it, it’s reasonable to get the impression that the latest adaptation from Colleen Hoover, Reminders of Him, is intentionally aiming for an unlikable lead. Nothing says “get the audience on the side of our protagonist” like all of the above.
The reality is that Maika Monroe is capable enough to inject a modicum of emotion and grounded sincerity even into a Colleen Hoover character, but that, directed by Vanessa Caswill (with Lauren Levine writing the screenplay alongside the author), these are all characters stuck reaching for depth far out of grasp in a hollow romance that is less about someone with a criminal record ingratiating themselves back into society after a seven-year vehicular manslaughter sentence and earning the trust of her dead boyfriend’s parents (Bradley Whitford and Lauren Graham), now the legal guardians of her five-year-old daughter, for visitation rights or anything that would force the novelist (this is her third book translated to screen in as many years) to write an actual character, and more a dull push-pull possible relationship with the former NFL star best friend picking up the pieces, living next door to those grandparents, and assisting taking care of the young girl.
Asking the question “what would it be like to fuck your dead boyfriend’s best friend” should be a hell of a lot more morally thorny and emotionally charged than this. Rather than engage with that, the filmmakers need to dedicate 70 minutes to an outrageously contrived setup in which Kenna and that best friend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers, also visibly trying to express some personality and humanity, but is left hanging by the script), have never met before. Yes, you read that right (and yes, those are the real ridiculous names of these characters, although the latter is presumably intended to honor the late great Heath Ledger, who once starred in romantic dramas and made them a hell of a lot more watchable).
Despite being best friends, Ledger not only never met his best friend’s girlfriend, but he apparently had never even seen a picture of her until her mugshot (which he conveniently forgets, never mind that Maika Monroe looks mostly the same seven years removed) following the car accident on Scotty’s (Rudy Pankow) birthday, which he bailed on for fitness exams in preparation for the NFL draft. In the present, he no longer plays, having “blown out a shoulder”, yet appears physically fine and in no pain during the numerous shirtless scenes and a couple of sexual ones. Before the film gets there, he is skeptical of going anywhere near Kenna once he discovers her identity. Of course, that doesn’t last long because these two hot leads are gravitating toward spending time together.
Much of this is, to put it bluntly, airless and lifeless despite an ensemble trying their best to elevate the proceedings, with what feels like significant chunks of the novel cut out; there is a single flashback to Kenna’s time in prison – being taken under the wing of a mentor of sorts on how to survive – and Scotty is allocated such a minimal screen time that he hardly feels like a character and is never allowed to feel like a presence looming over the story and the choices these characters make. For some reason, there is also a friend Kenna makes here with Down syndrome (Monika Myers) who seems to exist as a vessel for comedic relief, which might have sat better if, once again, there were actually a damn character behind that.
One waits and waits for the inevitable moment where, after snowcone dates and playful arguments about music, there is a release of sexual tension. However, the drama resulting from this is childish, dumb, and resolved about three scenes later. You won’t need a reminder that Reminders of Him, like all Colleen Hoover adaptations thus far, is bad, once again searching for a romantic pulse and eroticism at the expense of characters who feel like actual people or anything that gives weight to the attempts at thorniness.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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