Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has apologized to the model Courtney Stodden for a decade-old comedy sketch in which he rubbed a mobile phone on her breasts when she was 17, saying, “It was inappropriate and I truly regret it”.
Stodden made international headlines in 2011 when she married her ex-husband, The Green Mile actor Doug Hutchison, when she was 16 and he was 51. Though she was a minor, the marriage was legal due to her parents giving their permission. Stodden and Hutchison divorced in 2020.
In the years since, Stodden, now 31, has been outspoken against child marriage in the US, which remains legal in 33 states with parental consent or a judicial waiver. Child marriage was legal in every US state until 2018.
On Monday, Stodden posted a statement about the 2012 Funny or Die sketch, published when she was 17. In the sketch she plays herself and wears a red bikini while Alexander, playing a daytime television doctor, rubs a phone on her breasts while saying he has “full bars” in her chest but that he is “not getting anything” in her head. After making several suggestive remarks, Alexander’s character then invites Stodden to come back on to his talk show when she has turned 18.
Alexander, who played George Costanza in Seinfeld, is one of the writers credited for the sketch and was 52 when it was filmed.
“Looking back now, I don’t see comedy,” Stodden wrote. “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. I can’t change what happened to me but I can ask myself: how did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable?
“That’s exactly why I speak out today. Children deserve laws that protect them. They shouldn’t have to become adults before realising the law should have protected them all along.”
Alexander apologized on Wednesday, telling the Hollywood Reporter: “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. But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.”
Stodden later told the Hollywood Reporter, “I appreciate Jason Alexander’s public apology. People keep asking if he’s apologized privately, and he hasn’t. A private apology would be meaningful, but meaningful action would be even more powerful.
“If he truly regrets what happened, I’d invite him to support [non-profit] Unchained At Last and the fight to end child marriage through AB 1267. That’s how we turn accountability into lasting change.”
Since their divorce, Hutchison has said he was “blacklisted” for marrying Stodden but said he had “no regrets”, calling their marriage “a beautiful and powerful journey. A bittersweet journey with Courtney”.
