Jason Alexander has issued an apology for the 2012 Funny or Die comedy sketch that got him called out by then-17-year-old Courtney Stodden, who said the Seinfeld star “repeatedly” touched her inappropriately during their scene together.
In Stodden’s Monday Instagram post, she wrote that she “didn’t understand” why Alexander “rubbed his phone across my breasts” several times during Funny or Die’s The Donny Clay Show—which parodies motivational TV hosts like Dr. Phil—and joked that “he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me,” as she was 17 years old at the time.
Alexander addressed the sketch in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“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 wrote in an email. “But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.”
Stodden, who rose to reality TV fame after marrying then 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison when she was just 16 years old, posted a screengrab of Alexander holding his phone to her breast. “I was 17 years old in this photo,” she wrote. “The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand.”
Stodden, who alleges she was exploited in her age-gap marriage and refers to herself as a former “child bride,” made the post to encourage California to ban marriage for people under the age of 18 without parental or judicial exception.
Her own parents approved of her marriage to Stodden in 2011, to whom she was married for nine years before they divorced in 2020. During that time, Stodden, an aspiring country pop singer, claims Hutchison “emotionally and verbally abused” her, culminating in the Funny or Die sketch with Alexander that she said made her “feel so alone.”
Media coverage at the time made light of the sketch. Hutchison has consistently denied her accusations.
“I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate,” she wrote of the sketch on Monday. “The contracts were signed by adults. The paycheck went to Doug. The production moved forward. I was the only child in the room. I felt so alone.”
Alexander played George Costanza on Seinfeld for all nine seasons. He also won a Tony Award for his role in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway in 1989 and is an active Broadway director.
