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Jason Alexander takes responsibility for his past mistakes.
The 66-year-old actor recently apologized to Courtney Stodden for taking part in a 2012 Funny or Die sketch in which he held up a cell phone to her chest and commented on her body as a child.
“When I look back on the comedy that Ms. Stodden and I shared in 2012, I completely agree that it was wrong and I am truly sorry,” he told Fox News Digital in a statement. “But more importantly, I’m very sorry for any harm or distress I’ve caused Ms. Stodden. I’m very sorry to her.”
His apology comes one day after Stodden named Alexander on Instagram as one of the authors of the sketch, adding, “As an adult, that truth has become harder—not easier—for me to understand.”
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Alexander apologized to Stodden for a 2012 painting in which he objected to her body. (Getty Images)
On the Instagram site, she shared a picture of herself with Alexander in a painting, where she is wearing a bikini, and the actress rubs her cell phone against her chest.
“I was 17 years old in this picture. When I grow up, it is impossible to understand this,” he wrote. “During this sketch, Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone against my breasts while saying there was no ‘signal’ in my head but ‘many signals’ in my chest. Later in the sketch, he joked that when I turned 18 he would like to take me behind the bed and ‘go his way’ with me.”
He added that when he was young he “didn’t have the legal authority to decide if I wanted to participate” and that “contracts were signed by adults.”
At the time, she was married to Doug Hutchison, with whom she tied the knot when she was 16 and at the age of 51, noting that the payment for this appearance came to her.
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He described feeling alone while on the set of Funny or Die. (Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images)
“I was the only child in the room. I felt alone,” he added. “When I look back now, I don’t see the jokes. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became a joke for adults. People still say, ‘She chose to be there.’ Legally, I could not make those decisions for myself. That’s the point.”
He concludes by admitting that while he can’t change what he went through, he finds himself asking, “How do most adults look at a young child and decide that this is acceptable?”
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“That’s why I’m speaking today,” he concluded. “Children deserve laws that protect them. They should not be adults before they realize that the law was supposed to protect them all this time.”
Captions also called for support for California Assembly Bill 1267, which aims to permanently end child marriage by setting the minimum legal age for marriage in California to 18 without exception.
Stodden married Hutchison when she was 16 and she was 51, and now advocates for a law that prohibits child marriage without exception. (JB Lacroix/WireImage)
Stodden and Hutchison married in 2011 despite their 34-year age gap. They broke up and got back together a few times before officially calling it quits in 2016, though divorce papers weren’t filed until March 2018, and the divorce was finalized in March 2020.
She announced their divorce in an Instagram post with her wedding photo, calling it an “emotional day,” but assured her fans “it’s better.”
Stodden announced her divorce on Instagram in March 2020, saying in a caption that she now feels useful. (Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images)
“I look back at this photo and feel completely taken advantage of,” he wrote. “I’ve been afraid to even talk about feeling cheated or insulted during a marriage of almost 10 years because I was still a child and he was 50 years old when we got married, but I’m a woman now it’s time to put on my big girl pants and talk about this issue.
He continued: “I felt completely trapped, abandoned and sometimes abandoned by adults // I grew up in such a place – it was a lonely and dark place.”
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