In case you haven't heard, there's a rather disturbing situation going down right now between Natalie Portman and Moby...and Moby just weighed in AGAIN on the whole mess.
Let's start with a recap: Moby just released a memoir in which he claims to have dated Natalie in 1999, when she was 20 and he was 33.
The problem? Well, first of all, Natalie says she never dated Moby, and has some unpleasant memories of their time together. And second of all, Natalie was 17 and 18 in the year 1999 — not 20, as Moby claims.
“I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating," she told Harper's Bazaar in an interview. "Because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school."
She went on to describe his story as "disturbing" and shared her memory of their interactions:
I was a fan and went to one of his shows when I had just graduated. When we met after the show, he said, "Let’s be friends." He was on tour and I was working, shooting a film, so 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.
Yesterday, Moby responded to Natalie's interview by doubling down on his claims that they dated. He also posted this photo to Instagram, which, um, might not have been the slam-dunk defense he thought it was:
In his caption, he wrote that the story laid out in his book was accurate — although he did not explain why he wrote that she was 20 at the time, when she could only have been 18 at most.
All of that brings us to today, when Moby took to Instagram, published a slideshow of images of him and Natalie hanging out together, and once again insisted that he dated her.
"In my memoir, Then It Fell Apart, I respectfully and honestly describe the brief, innocent, and consensual romantic involvement I had with Natalie Portman in 1999," he wrote — although he still did not address the age inconsistency in his story.
"But she’s denying that we ever dated, even though in the past she’s publicly discussed our involvement," he continued. "And there’s ample photographic evidence that we briefly dated and then were friends (some pictures included in this post)."
Moby went on to say that he was receiving anonymous threats from this ordeal, and that "it’s affecting [his] business and [his] health":
So what should I do? What do you do when people believe lies and accusations and not actual photographs and evidence? I want to take the high road, but I honestly don’t know what to do. It’s one thing to be lied about, and entirely another when someone’s lies result in physical threats from complete strangers.
OKAY. So. There's a lot we could unpack here, but for starters...
1) Having photos with a person is not proof you dated them. (Especially not this one.)
2) Natalie Portman was 17 and 18 years old in the year 1999. Google is free!
3) If a person looks back on your time together and says you were "creepy" and "inappropriate," that should probably concern you more than whether or not they'd call it "dating."
And with that, I've had quite enough internet for the day. Goodbye.
