Tonya Harding Just Lost Her Publicist

In all the buzz of the award-winning biopic and her multiple media profiles, Tonya Harding just lost her trusty publicist.

On Thursday, Michael Rosenberg, Harding’s longtime publicist and agent, quit his post as Harding’s rep. Per USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, in a Facebook post titled, “I, Tonya, is Now Goodbye, Tonya!,” Rosenberg announced he was terminating their professional relationship.

Rosenberg wrote on Facebook that Harding made a request that every reporter who asked about her past be fined a hefty sum of $25,000, and that is why he could no longer represent her.

“Unfortunately, we reached an impasse today, regarding how to treat the press in the future” he wrote. “Her adamant and final position is that reporters must sign an affidavit stating that they won’t ask her anything ‘about the past’ or they’ll be fined $25,000. Obviously, it doesn’t work that way; and therefore I’ve chosen to terminate our business relationship.”

Rosenberg represented Harding just before the 1994 scandal in which a man associated with her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, clubbed her competitor and fellow Olympic team member, Nancy Kerrigan, on the kneecap at skating practice. Rosenberg told the Albuquerque Journal in 2014 that he dropped Harding two months before the incident because he did not care for Gillooly. But he still remained on her side publicly.

“I went on Nightline and Crossfire and all the TV shows at the time,” he said. “There were trucks with big dishes in front of my house. Everybody wanted to know, ‘Did she do it?’ I was the only one out there who said I don’t believe that Tonya did it . . . There’s no evidence she conspired.”

Rosenbgerg’s announcement came just one day after Wednesday’s The New York Times profile of Harding, and in the midst of the awards campaign for I, Tonya.

In the film, Margot Robbie portrays Harding and Allison Janney portrays her mother. Both Robbie and Janney won Critics’ Choice Awards for the film on Thursday night.

Both I, Tonya and the Times profile blame the scandal on abuse Harding received from not just her mother and ex-husband, but also from the media.

Harding said that she was often portrayed as the ugly duckling and pitted against other female skaters like Kerrigan. “The media abused me in the first place,” she told the Times.

“Where were our think pieces then?” Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote in the profile, before quoting Harding: “You all disrespected me and it hurt. I’m a human being and it hurt my heart.”