Jason Alexander has issued an apology to Courtney Stodden for an inappropriate 2012 sketch titled Funny or Die, in which Seinfeld The actor rubbed a cell phone on Stodden’s breasts when she was just 17 years old.
“Given the sketch comedy Ms. Stodden and I participated in in 2012, I completely agree that it was inappropriate and I truly regret it,” Alexander said in a joint statement. Hollywood Reporter. “But most importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress I have caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincere apologies.”
However, in a follow-up statement shared with THR After Alexander’s apology was widely reported in the press, Stodden said: “I appreciate Jason Alexander’s public apology. People keep asking if he apologized in private, and he hasn’t. A private apology would be meaningful, but meaningful action would be more powerful.”
“If he is truly remorseful for what happened, I will call on him to support Unchained At Last and fight to end child marriage through AB 1267,” she continued. “This is how we turn accountability into lasting change.”
In a Monday Instagram post, Stodden shared a photo from the sketch, in which she was wearing a red bikini and Alexander was holding a phone over her chest. She explained in the caption that she was underage when the film was filmed. “Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone on my breasts while saying there was no signal in my head but a lot of signals in my chest,” she wrote.
“Later in the sketch, he joked that when I turned 18, he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me. IMDb credits him as one of the episode’s writers. As an adult, this fact has become more difficult — not easier — for me to understand.” “I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal authority to decide if I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults. The stipend went to Doug [Hutchison]. Production moved forward. I was the only child in the room. I felt so lonely.
The model married her ex-husband The green mile Actor Doug Hutchison when she was 16 years old. He was 51 years old. Looking back, she said in her Instagram post that she wonders how any adult allowed the drawing to happen.
“Looking back now, I don’t see comedy. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became part of an adult joke. And people still say, ‘You chose to be there.'” Legally, I couldn’t make those decisions for myself. That’s the point. I can’t change what happened to me but I can ask myself: How did so many adults look at a minor and decide that this is acceptable? “And that’s exactly why I’m speaking out today,” she wrote. Children deserve laws that protect them. “They shouldn’t have to become adults before they realize that the law should have protected them all along.”
