It was business as usual for Natalie Portman on Thursday after Moby finally issued a public apology.
Hopefully, things can now go back to normal for the 37-year-old actress who has been dragged into a dispute with Moby, 53, over claims that they ‘dated’ when she was 20 and he was 33.
On Wednesday night, Moby cancelled future promotion of the book in which he published the claims and apologised for acting ‘inconsiderately and disrespectfully’.
The next day, Natalie was seen hitting the hair salon in West Hollywood with a hot coffee.
She dressed casually for the solo outing, in the same week that her husband Benjamin Millepied appeared to step up to support her.
It’s been a confusing few days for the Black Swan star, who publicly disputed claims she ever ‘dated’ Moby around 20 years ago.
As Natalie remembers it, she and Moby ‘hung out’ a handful of times because she was a fan of his music but when she realised he was interested ‘in a way that felt inappropriate’ she stopped seeing him.
Natalie told Harper’s Bazaar: ‘I was surprised to hear that he characterised the very short time that I knew him as dating.
‘My recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school.’
Moby published his version of events in the book When It Fell Apart, and defiantly stood by it when Natalie tried to deny they dated.
In the book, Moby writes: ‘I was a bald binge drinker and Natalie Portman was a beautiful movie star. But here she was in my dressing room, flirting with me.’
He then claimed that he ‘tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend’ for a few weeks but it ‘hadn’t worked out’.
The Porcelain singer continued: ‘I thought that I was going to have to tell her that my panic was too egregious for me to be in a real relationship, but one night on the phone she informed me that she’d met somebody else.
‘I was relieved that I’d never have to tell her how damaged I was.’
Many point out that Moby’s facts do seem to be slightly off since Natalie would have actually been 18 in 1999, not 20 years old.
On Wednesday, he called out all future appearances for the foreseeable future and decided not to continue promotion for the book.
Announcing that he was ‘going away for a while,’ he wrote on Instagram: ‘Before I [go] I want to apologise again, and to say clearly that all of this has been my own fault.
‘I am the one who released the book without showing it to the people I wrote about. I’m the one who posted defensively and arrogantly.
‘I’m the one who behaved inconsiderately and disrespectfully, both in 2019 and in 1999. There is obviously no one else to blame but me. Thank you, and I’m sorry. Moby.’
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