Photo: Getty
It's a He Said/She Said situation.
By Amy Lamare — Written on May 24, 2019
Moby has a new memoir out, Then It All Fell Apart and apparently it is creating waves among the celeb set, particularly Natalie Portman who is not at all pleased about her inclusion in the book. Moby claims that he and Portman dated briefly nearly 20 years ago. Natalie says that is just not the case. In fact, she claims that what Moby thinks was a relationship was simply a creepy older man coming on to a teenager. Moby claims that he was 33 to Portman's 20 at the time, but they have a 16 year age difference — Portman is now 37 to Moby's 53. Portman told Harpers Bazaar UK: "I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school." Did Natalie Portman date Moby?
1. Moby's claim
In his book, Moby claims that he "tried to be her boyfriend" for awhile but he had so many issues at the time he couldn't be the boyfriend he wanted to be. He claims that Natalie broke up with him because she met someone else. Moby said that Natalie approached him backstage after a show. He said: "I was nervous, so I made small talk. We're going to New York in a few days,' I said. 'For the VMAs.' She smiled again and looked straight into my eyes. 'I'll be in New York, too. Can we meet up?' "I was a bald binge drinker and Natalie Portman was a beautiful movie star. But here she was in my dressing room, flirting with me." Moby said Portman breaking up with him was a relief, as he would not have to come clean about his anxiety issues.
2. Natalie's denial
First of all, Natalie was surprised and disappointed that not only did Moby not ask her if it was OK to tell that story, but no one involved with the publishing of the book fact checked the details of the story. If they had, she would have been willing to tell her side of it. She said: "I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school." She claims they met after one of his shows and he suggested that they 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," she said.
3. The math doesn't add up
Moby claims that Natalie was 20 and he was 33 when they had their relationship or whatever it was. Except the two are 16 years apart. So how does that work? Natalie said that she was 18 when they met. Portman said: “He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18. There was no fact checking from him or his publisher — it almost feels deliberate. That he used this story to sell his book was very disturbing to me. It wasn’t the case. There are many factual errors and inventions. I would have liked him or his publisher to reach out to fact check.”
4. Moby hits back
Moby responded to Portman's denial with a photo of them back in the time period in which he claims they dated and captioned it: "I recently read a gossip piece wherein Natalie Portman said that we’d never dated. This confused me, as we did, in fact, date. And after briefly dating in 1999 we remained friends for years," he wrote on Instagram. "I like Natalie, and I respect her intelligence and activism. But, to be honest, I can't figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth about our (albeit brief) involvement. The story as laid out in my book Then It Fell Apart is accurate, with lots of corroborating photo evidence, etc." He added: "Ps I completely respect Natalie's possible regret in dating me (to be fair, I would probably regret dating me, too), but it doesn't alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history."
Amy Lamare is a Los Angeles based freelance writer covering entertainment, pop culture, beauty, fashion, fitness, technology, and the intersection of technology, business, and philanthropy. She is deeply devoted to her chocolate Labrador and an avid long distance runner. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.