Jason Alexander has apologized for an “inappropriate” comedy skit with then-minor Courtney Stodden.
“Looking back at the comedy skit that Ms. Stodden and I participated in in 2012, I completely agree that it was inappropriate and truly regret it,” the “Seinfeld” alum told Page Six in a statement Tuesday.
“But more importantly, we deeply apologize for the harm and distress caused to Mr. Stodden.” “I sincerely apologize to her.”
On Monday, Stodden took to Instagram to call out Alexander for a 2012 Funny or Die skit titled “The Don Clay Show with Courtney Stodden,” in which Alexander rubs his cell phone against her chest.
“I was 17 years old,” Stodden writes. “The older you get, the more impossible it is to understand this. During this comedy skit, Jason Alexander kept rubbing his cell phone against my chest and saying that in my head I had ‘no signal’ but in my chest I had ‘a lot of signals.'”
“Later in the sketch, he joked that when I turned 18, he wanted to take me behind the couch and ‘do whatever he wanted with me,'” Alexander said, noting that he also co-wrote the sketch.
“As an adult, understanding that fact wasn’t easy, it became more difficult. I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal authority to decide whether to participate or not. The contract was signed by an adult. The salary was paid to Doug.” Stodden’s then-husband Hutchison married her when Stodden was 51 and she was 16 in 2011.
Stodden, now 31, said looking back 14 years later, the video doesn’t seem like a comedy at all.
“I see a 17-year-old girl who became part of an adult joke.”
She also recalled being “the only kid in the room” and feeling “very lonely” during production.
“People still say, ‘You chose to be there,'” she wrote. “Legally, I couldn’t make those decisions myself.”
“You can’t change what happened to you, but you can ask yourself: Why did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable?” she concluded her post. “That’s exactly why I’m speaking out today. Children deserve laws that protect them. They don’t have to grow up to realize that the laws should have been protecting them all along.”
Regarding the sketch, Stodden said in a statement to Page Six: “At the age of 17, I was a minor working in an environment where the adults around me were responsible for my safety and well-being. Looking back as an adult, those experiences are very different now.”
“The reason I speak out now is not to look back on the past for its own sake… but to help create a future where children are better protected and adults in positions of power are held to higher standards,” she added.
Stodden filed for divorce from Hutchison in 2018 when she was 24 years old. Mr Stodden has since told the union he has branded him a “predator” and a “pedophile”.
The “Green Mile” actor, now 66, has dismissed his ex-wife’s claims.
Their divorce was finalized in 2020.
She is currently married to film and television producer Jared Safier.
It’s worth noting that Stodden’s mother allowed Hutchison to marry her daughter, for which Stodden said she has apologized numerous times.
The Celebrity Big Brother alum is currently using her platform to advocate for the passage of AB 1267, a bipartisan bill proposed in California that would set the minimum age for marriage at 18 without exception.
