A fourteen-year-old comedy sketch produced in California has ended with a Seinfeld star publicly apologizing, and with the woman at the center of it asking for something more useful than an apology.
Courtney Stodden, now 31, posted on Instagram on Monday about a sexualized Funny or Die sketch she appeared in alongside Jason Alexander in 2012, when she was 17 and he was 52. She wrote that the passage of time has made it harder, not easier, to make sense of.
“I was 17 years old in this photo. The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand,” she wrote.
Her central point was about consent and who actually held it. “I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults,” Stodden wrote, adding that she was “the only child in the room” and “felt so alone.“
Alexander, now 66, who is credited as a co-writer on the sketch as well as a performer in it, responded within a day. In a statement to Page Six on Tuesday, he did not qualify or contextualize.
“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,” he said. “But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.“
She Accepted It, Then Asked Him to Do Something
Stodden told TMZ she accepted the apology, and then made a request of him.
“I believe the most meaningful apology is one that creates change,” she said, encouraging Alexander to support and donate to Unchained At Last, an organization working to end child marriage in the United States. She has been advocating alongside the group, a cause rooted in her own history: she was married at 16 to actor Doug Hutchison, then 50. They divorced in 2020.
A representative for Stodden told the Daily Mail she had not been told what the scene would involve before she arrived, and was informed of her role once she was on set. She had only been asked to bring a swimsuit.
Stodden framed the whole episode as an argument for legal reform rather than a grievance against one performer.
“Children deserve laws that protect them,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to become adults before realizing the law should have protected them all along.“
The apology took fourteen years. The laws she is asking for have not arrived yet.
