Moby, a man who erroneously believed he dated an 18-year-old Natalie Portman when he was a 33-year-old man, is sorry that he continued to insist they dated when she unambiguously said they did not.
In a May 25 Instagram post titled “from moby, an apology,” he recognized “that many of the criticisms leveled at me regarding my inclusion of Natalie in Then It Fell Apart are very valid,” though nowhere in his apology does he admit that the two didn’t date.
In his second memoir Then It Fell Apart, he wrote that he “tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend” and mentions the two of them kissing and sleeping next to one another in her Harvard dorm room. In response, Portman said he was, “an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate.”
Last week Moby posted several truly awkward photos in order to prove that he dated Portman; however, those only served to make the situation look even skeevier. Now, two decades, a memoir, and a lot of backlash later, Moby says he gets why everyone is so grossed out, writing, “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.” But he does still seem to be hanging onto his claim that Portman was 20 in 1999 when, according to IMDB, she was born in 1981, while Moby was born in 1965.
He also apologized for not giving everyone he included in the book, including Natalie Portman and Lana Del Ray, a heads up that he was going to be writing about them.
Edit: This post has been edited to point out that Moby’s apology did not include a retraction of his claim to have dated Portman.