Moby is refusing to discuss his assertion that he briefly dated Natalie Portman two decades ago, a claim she denies.
In his 2019 memoir, Moby said the actress flirted with him after one of his shows in 1999 and he "tried to be her boyfriend." The two, he said, parted after a few dates. Natalie later slammed his book and Moby's claims, prompting him to first post a throwback photo of them together and claiming it was "evidence." Afterward, he deleted the Instagram photo and apologized.
In a new chat with The Guardian, Moby was asked about the confusion.
"You know, you're asking me to open up such a can of worms… There's no good way to answer: one option is terrible, the other is really terrible. So if we were playing chess right now, this is the part where I'd pick up my phone and pretend I've got an emergency call," he said. "A part of me wishes I could spend the next two hours deconstructing the whole thing. But there's levels of complexity and nuance that I really can't go into."
After Moby's initial dating claim, many were shocked, as the duo would have had a huge age gap. Natalie, it seems, was also surprised, as she told Harper's Bazaar that the two never dated at all and called him "creepy."
"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. He said I was 20. I definitely wasn't. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18," she said.
Natalie added at the time, "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 his new chat, Moby addressed Natalie's use of the word "creepy."
"I wouldn't use that word. But when I was an out-of-control alcoholic and drug addict I definitely acted selfish and incredibly inconsiderately towards family members and friends and girlfriends and people I worked with," he said.
For the most part, Moby avoided legitimate backlash for the scandal.
"When the lunacy was happening a couple of years ago, I took refuge in my ignorance," he said. "Obviously it became hard to ignore, especially when I had the tabloids camped outside my door. But I guess I realized that if everyone in the world hates me I can still wake up in my same comfortable bed every morning and go hiking."