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Jason Alexander is taking accountability for his past mistakes.
The 66-year-old actor recently apologized to Courtney Stodden for participating in a 2012 Funny or Die sketch in which he held a cellphone up to her chest and made comments about her body when she was a minor.
“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,” he told Digital in a statement. “But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.”
His apology comes one day after Stodden called out Alexander on Instagram as one of the writers of the sketch, adding, “As an adult, that fact has become harder—not easier—for me to understand.”
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Alexander apologized to Stodden for a 2012 sketch in which he objectified her body. (Getty Images)
In the Instagram post, she shared a photo of her and Alexander in the sketch, in which she is wearing a bikini, and the actor is rubbing a cellphone across her chest.
“I was 17 years old in this photo. The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand,” she wrote. “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 joked that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me.”
She added that as a minor she “didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate” and that “the contracts were signed by adults.”
At the time, she was married to Doug Hutchison, who she tied the knot with when she was 16 and he was 51, noting the paycheck for this appearance went to him.
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Stodden 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 so alone,” she added. “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.”
She ended the post by acknowledging that while she isn’t able to change what she went through, she finds herself asking, “How did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable?”
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“That’s exactly why I speak out today,” she concluded. “Children deserve laws that protect them. They shouldn’t have to become adults before realizing the law should have protected them all along.”
The caption also included a call to support California Assembly Bill 1267, which aims to permanently end child marriage by setting the minimum legal age for marriage in California to 18 with no exceptions.
Stodden married Hutchison when she was 16 and he was 51, and is now advocating for legislation banning child marriage without exception. (JB Lacroix/WireImage)
Stodden and Hutchison got married in 2011 despite their 34-year age gap. They split up and got back together a few times before officially calling it quits in 2016, although divorce papers were not filed until March 2018, with the divorce being finalized in March 2020.
She announced their divorce in an Instagram post featuring her wedding photo, calling it “an emotional day,” but assured her fans “it’s for the better.”
Stodden announced her divorce on Instagram in March 2020, saying in the caption she now feels taken advantage of. (Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images)
“I look back at this picture and feel absolutely taken advantage of,” she wrote. “I’ve been scared to even speak up about feeling groomed or being verbally abused during the almost 10 year marriage because I was a child and he was 50 when we married but I’m a woman now and it’s time for me to put my big girl pants on and speak on this matter.”
She continued: “I’ve felt completely trapped, manipulated and at times abandoned by adults // growing up in such an environment — it became a lonely and dark place.”
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