Natalie Portman gets Instagram 'apology' from Moby

A final twist in the, 'Did Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman ever date musician Moby?' saga.

MAY 26, 2019 18:48

Natalie Portman 370 (photo credit: Reuters) — Natalie Portman 370

(photo credit: Reuters)

There's one more twist in the, "Did Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman ever date musician Moby?" saga.

On Saturday, Moby issued an "apology" for writing he had dated Portman without telling her about her inclusion in his book, although he did not take back his claim that the two had indeed dated.

In an Instagram post entitled “from Moby, an apology,” the musician wrote that "I’ve realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid."

"It was truly inconsiderate for me to not let them know before the book was released," he wrote. "So for that I apologize, to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand.

"Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago," he wrote.

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As some time has passed I've realized that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid. I also fully recognize that it was truly inconsiderate of me to not let her know about her inclusion in the book beforehand, and equally inconsiderate for me to not fully respect her reaction. I have a lot of admiration for Natalie, for her intelligence, creativity, and animal rights activism, and I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress. I tried to treat everyone I included in Then It Fell Apart with dignity and respect, but nonetheless it was truly inconsiderate for me to not let them know before the book was released. So for that I apologize, to Natalie, as well as the other people I wrote about in Then It Fell Apart without telling them beforehand. Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago. Moby
A post shared by moby xⓋx (@moby) on May 25, 2019 at 6:44am PDT

Moby, who has a history of making rather provocative outbursts, claimed to have dated Natalie Portman when she was 20 and he was 33.

He claimed in a memoir published last week, titled Then It All Fell Apart, that they briefly dated after flirting with each other.

However, Portman has a very different account of their brief "fling" and presented her perspective in an interview with Harper's Bazzar.

“I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school,” she told the magazine. “He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18.”

Portman's description of their "relationship' was that she was a fan of his and met him backstage after a show: “We only hung out a handful of times before I realized that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate.”

However, since the initial claim in his book, there have been more developments.

On Wednesday, on Instagram, the 53-year-old singer became more resolute in his initial claims of them having a brief romance, alongside a photo of the pair of them from the period of time in question.

“I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated,” Moby wrote. “This confused me, as we did, in fact, date. And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years. I like Natalie, and I respect her intelligence and activism. But, to be honest, I can’t figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth about our (albeit brief) involvement.”

The singer continued by saying that the account in his memoir “is accurate, with lots of corroborating photo evidence,” adding that he would certainly understand Portman regretting dating him, “but it doesn’t alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history.”

Amy Spiro contributed to this report.