Moby says there’s ‘no good way to answer’ questions about his Natalie Portman scandal
Moby would rather not discuss that whole Natalie Portman thing, but, well, OK, if you insist... https://t.co/Oiy6EIW6hd pic.twitter.com/di8NMG2XMO
- Stereogum (@stereogum) April 12, 2021
In a new interview with The Guardian, Moby reflects on the backlash he faced after claiming that he dated Natalie Portman in his 2019 memoir. Natalie was upset by the claims, telling Harper’s Bazaar, “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. He said I was 20. I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18.”
Moby subsequently issued an apology and cancelled the U.K. leg of his book tour. Now two years later, he's back to discussing Natalie.
On whether he regrets writing about his experience with Portman: “You know, you’re asking me to open up such a can of worms. There’s no good way to answer: one option is terrible, the other is really terrible. So if we were playing chess right now, this is the part where I’d pick up my phone and pretend I’ve got an emergency call...A part of me wishes I could spend the next two hours deconstructing the whole thing, but there’s levels of complexity and nuance that I really can’t go into. There is a part of me in hindsight that wishes I hadn’t written the book. But then, sales figures indicate that not that many people actually read it.”
On Natalie's response that he was creepy: "I wouldn’t use that word. But when I was an out-of-control alcoholic and drug addict I definitely acted selfish and incredibly inconsiderately towards family members and friends and girlfriends and people I worked with. But again, part of the 12-step program is that it’s a program of rigorous honesty. I don’t want to sound too much like a cliche ageing musician in southern California, but the idea of genuinely looking at your actions and making amends for them is a process that I believe I’ve gone through pretty thoroughly. And it does make me sad that I probably don’t do an effective enough job trying to communicate the addiction struggle and contextualize the stories that way."
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