- Morissette said she will not promote the new
HBO documentary "Jagged" despite contributing to it. - She said in a statement to Variety that the movie is "salacious" and includes inaccurate information.
- In the movie, Morisette reportedly says she was raped by multiple men when she was 15.
Alanis Morisette said in a statement to Variety that she will not attend events for "Jagged," a new HBO documentary about her life because the movie includes "implications and facts that are simply not true."
The documentary, which Morissette contributed to, follows the Canadian pop star's journey to stardom and raises difficult questions about the
"Jagged" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival yesterday but The Washington Post reported last week that Morisette would not be attending the premiere or promote the movie because she was upset with the documentary.
"I agreed to participate in a piece about the celebration of 'Jagged Little Pill's' 25th anniversary and was interviewed during a very vulnerable time (while in the midst of my third postpartum depression during lockdown)," Morisette said in a statement to Variety. "I was lulled into a false sense of security, and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film. This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell."
She continued: "I sit here now experiencing the full impact of having trusted someone who did not warrant being trusted. I have chosen not to attend any event around this movie for two reasons: one is that I am on tour ["Jagged Little Pill" 25th-anniversary tour] right now. The other is that, not unlike many 'stories' and unauthorized biographies out there over the years, this one includes implications and facts that are simply not true. While there is beauty and some elements of accuracy in this/my story to be sure - I ultimately won't be supporting someone else's reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell."
The director of "Jagged," the award-winning documentarian Alison Klayman told Deadline on Monday of Morisette's absence: "Of course, it would have been great if she could be here with us but I'm so grateful for all the time that she did put into making this film."
"It's a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself," Klayman continued. "I think she's incredibly brave and the reaction when she saw it was that it was a really - she could feel all the work, all the nuance that went into it. And again, she gave so much of her time and so much of her effort into making this and I think that the movie really speaks for itself."
Insider has reached out to HBO for comment.
The Post, which has seen the movie, reported last week that in the movie the "Ironic" singer says that multiple men engaged in sex with her when she was 15 years old, at the beginning of her career in Canada.
The age of consent at that time was 14 but the law stated that the age of consent can be higher "when there is a relationship of trust, authority or dependency," The Post reported. Morisette does not name the people she said abused her but does say she's tried to tell people before.
"I did tell a few people and it kind of fell on deaf ears. It would usually be a stand-up, walk-out-of-the-room moment," the Grammy Award-winning singer says in the movie, according to the Post.