Moby Says Says He Dated Natalie Portman, She Says no way “He was a much older man being creepy with me” And Moby’s Head Explodes
Moby reveals some pretty juicy gossip in his new memoir, Then It Fell Apart, about making out with Christina Ricci, feuding with Eminem, hanging out with his childhood heroes David Bowie and Joe Strummer, pursuing Lizzy Grant before she was Lana Del Rey, and dating a college-aged Natalie Portman. But in an interview today with Harper’s Bazaar, Portman denies their relationship.
“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,” 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.”
“I was a fan and went to one of his shows when I had just graduated,” she continued. “When we met after the show, he said, ‘let’s 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.”
In the book, Moby describes the story differently, writing, “We had just finished a show in Austin, playing to four hundred and fifty people at a venue that held five hundred. I walked to the backstage door, sure that this was a misunderstanding or a joke, but there was Natalie Portman, patiently waiting. She gazed up at me with black eyes and said, ‘Hi.’”
“I was a bald binge drinker who lived in an apartment that smelled like mildew and old bricks, and Natalie Portman was a beautiful movie star. But here she was in my dressing room, flirting with me.”
He references another encounter after the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards: “After the show Natalie appeared on the balcony where my turn-tables were set up. She was wearing a perfectly fitted beige dress and looked disconcertingly like Audrey Hepburn. ‘What do you think of my suit?’ I asked, smiling nervously.”
“The paparazzi knew my name. I’d never been photographed by paparazzi. No one had ever yelled my name before, unless they were mad at me. I wanted to stand there and soak up the flashes, but Natalie took my hand and led me into the hotel. I walked to the bar and ordered two vodka and sodas, one for each of us. ‘Oh, I don’t drink,’ she said, scanning the room – which, in turn, was scanning us.”
Moby continues, “I thought that Steven Tyler would find my story charming, but he stared at me blankly and asked, ‘Are you with Natalie Portman?’ ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘She’s so hot,’ he said, and walked away.”
A later chapter details a rendezvous from 1999 while Portman was attending Harvard in Boston: “I took a taxi to Cambridge to meet Natalie. We held hands and wandered around Harvard, kissing under the centuries-old oak trees. At midnight she brought me to her dorm room and we lay down next to each other on her small bed. After she fell asleep I carefully extracted myself from her arms and took a taxi back to my hotel.”
Moby’s Then It Fell Apart (Faber & Faber) is in bookstores now.
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. 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. Thanks,
MobyPs 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
Instead of turning off his phone and, say, spending the next few days in a sauna, or anywhere doing anything else, Moby has nonetheless continued to talk about Natalie Portman online. Following the actress’ blistering public denial over Moby’s claims that they dated when she was 20 (according to Portman, she actually 18 and they didn’t date), the most notorious bald techno producer in America once again took to his Instagram to express his exasperation over Natalie Portman not believing that they had dated, and further the attention he has received for trying to correct the record.
On Wednesday, Moby decided to respond to Portman’s recollection of their brief acquaintance as “creepy” and inappropriate by, well, posting a photo of himself shirtless with his arm around Portman, who looks to be in her teens. The photo, in which Moby is shirtless and Portman looks like a teenager, was accompanied by a defensive caption that once essentially accused Portman of lying about the nature of their relationship. This maneuver failed to fix his PR problem, and so on Thursday, instead of going to a movie or throwing his phone directly in front of an oncoming semi truck, Moby further breathed life into this news cycle that makes him look very bad by once again logging onto Instagram and posting more shit about Natalie Portman. The posts are long, rambling, and mainly just demonstrate that Moby either doesn’t understand, or refuses to acknowledge, why someone would think the way he discussed Portman in his book was gross, and why Portman would be upset over what she deems as Moby bragging about a conquest that never happened.
“dear trolls,” reads one of Moby’s Instagram posts from this morning. “I just don’t know if hating a stranger is the best use of your one, short life.” Following a few posts that include a trip to Washington D.C. lobbying Congress on behalf of the Humane Society (cool) and a front stoop hang with Ian Mackaye (also cool), Moby revisited the Portman narrative in the hopes… that he was going to finally craft the one Instagram post that would turn this all around? After all, he’s been bringing up this supposed relationship for years. In a 2008 interview with Spin, Moby discussed what he called his “ very brief affair with Natalie” and how it supposedly made him a target of “nerd wrath.” According to Moby, “you can’t date Luke Skywalker’s mom” and not have nerds “hate your guts.” Little did he know!
This would have been a great time for Moby to take the L and hide out while the news cycle quickly moved onto something else, but it was important that he provide photographic evidence of him having stood next to Natalie Portman on several occasions. He wrote:
“I can choose frustration and bitterness, or I can remember that as an activist I’m here to help, not to be helped,” Moby said in an Instagram post featuring a photo of a forest that hopefully gets bad cell and wifi reception. “To be of service, not to be served. Might sound like hippie nonsense, but it’s what I believe. And that adversity is no excuse for abandoning integrity and principles. So, attack me, slander me, lie about me, in the meantime I’ll be trying to save animals and help stop humans from destroying the only home we have. Bye.”
Moby, let me be the first to thank you for your service. Now, log the fuck off for your own sake, because the rest of us love the drama.
