Alanis Morissette has officially condemned the documentary about her iconic Jagged Little Pill album that premiered Tuesday at the Toronto Film Festival. Morissette accused Jagged, directed by Alison Klayman for HBO, of having a “salacious agenda” and including “implications and facts that are simply not true,” in a statement to Deadline Tuesday after her absence from the premiere was noted.
“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),” Morissette said in a lengthy statement to the outlet. Claiming she was “lulled into a false sense of security,” the singer revealed the filmmakers’ “salacious agenda” became apparent when she saw the first cut of the film and realized “our visions were in fact painfully diverged.”
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“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.” Morissette revealed that she did not plan on attending any event surrounding the film partly because she is currently on tour and partly because “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 the film, the Grammy winner concluded she “ultimately won’t be supporting someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell.” HBO has not publicly addressed Morissette’s statement.
Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported Morissette discusses being sexually assaulted at the age of 15 in the documentary. “I’m going to need some help because I never talk about this,” the Canadian artist reportedly says in the documentary. “It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part. I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded like ‘Hey, you were 15, you’re not consenting at 15.’ Now I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re all pedophiles. It’s all statutory rape.’” Morissette did not name her attackers in the film.
