What To Know
- Courtney Stodden called out Jason Alexander for acting inappropriately with her in a Funny or Die sketch that was filmed in 2012 when she was 17.
- Alexander issued an apology to Stodden and said he’s sorry for causing her harm and distress.
- Stodden married ex-husband Doug Hutchison when she was 16 and he was 51, and is now fighting for laws to protect minors.
Jason Alexander has issued an apology to Courtney Stodden after she called him out for acting inappropriately in a 2012 Funny or Die sketch they filmed when she was just 17 years old.
“Looking back at the comedy sketch in which Ms. Stodden and I participated in 2012, I completely agree that it was inappropriate and I truly regret it,” the Seinfeld star told TMZ.
The apology came after Stodden shared a still from a sketch that featured Alexander rubbing a cellphone across her breast while she wore a red bikini. In the post’s caption, she pointed out that she was a minor at the time and reflected on filming the video.
“The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand,” Stodden admitted. “During this comedy sketch, Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was ‘no signal’ in my head but ‘plenty of signal’ in my chest. Later in the sketch, he said that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me.”
She revealed that Alexander was one of the writers for the sketch and noted, “I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults. The paycheck went to [ex-husband] Doug [Hutchison].”
Stodden married Hutchison in 2011 when she was 16 and he was 51. She filed for divorce in 2018 and it was finalized in 2020.
Looking back on the Funny or Die sketch, she continued, “I was the only child in the room. I felt so alone. Looking back now, I don’t see comedy. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became part of an adult joke. People still say, ‘You chose to be there.’ Legally, I couldn’t make those decisions for myself. That’s the point.”
While Stodden knows she can’t change what happened in the past, she is questioning how this happened in the first place. “I can ask myself: How did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable?” she wrote.”That’s exactly why I speak out today. Children deserve laws that protect them. They shouldn’t have to become adults before realizing the law should have protected them all along.”
