Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has apologised for his role in an “inappropriate” comedy sketch with a then-17-year-old Courtney Stodden.
“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,” Alexander, 66, said in a statement.
The actor, best known for playing George Costanza in Seinfeld, has apologised. Getty
“But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms Stodden,” he added.
“I offer her my sincerest apologies.”
It comes after Stodden, 31, called out Alexander for the 2012 Funny or Die sketch, where the punchline involved him rubbing his phone against her chest.
“I was 17 years old in this photo. The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand,” she wrote alongside an image from the sketch.
“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 noted that Alexander was credited as a writer of the sketch on IMDb.
“I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults,” she said, adding that the money from the sketch went to her then-husband, Doug Hutchison, who married her when he was 51 and she was 16.
“Looking back now, I don’t see comedy. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became part of an adult joke.”
Courtney Stodden is now campaigning to for a bill that would end child marriage loopholes in California. Instagram/@courtneyastodden
Stodden said she was the “only child in the room” and children deserved laws that protect them.
She is using her platform to campaign for AB 1267, a bipartisan Californian bill that would end child marriage, making 18 the absolute minimum age for marriage with no exceptions.
Stodden was just 16 when she married The Green Mile actor Hutchison, who was 35 years her elder, in 2011.
Hutchison was 51 when he married 16-year-old Stodden. Getty
They quickly became tabloid fixtures until a permanent split in 2016.
On the day their divorce was finalised in 2020, Stodden wrote a long post on Instagram, that said, “I look back at this picture and feel absolutely taken advantage of.”
She accused Hutchison of grooming and verbal abuse throughout their marriage, which representatives for Hutchison have dismissed.