Turns out that Eminem was a tad premature in predicting the demise of Moby's career. Remember way back in 2002, when (after calling the resolutely heterosexual Moby a homophobic slur) Marshall Mathers declared "It's over; nobody listens to techno"?

Seventeen years later, the man born Richard Melville Hall is still around, although these days it's not his music making headlines, but his poor decision-making. Take, for example, his choice to reveal, in his new memoir Then It Fell Apart, that he and Natalie Portman had briefly seen each other romantically when he was 33 and she was 20.

Portman quickly fired back, telling Harper's Bazaar:

I was surprised to hear that he characterised 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. There was no fact checking from him or his publisher—it almost feels deliberate. That he used this story to sell his book was very disturbing to me. It wasn’t the case. There are many factual errors and inventions. I would have liked him or his publisher to reach out to fact check.

It's kind of funny that Portman still finds herself clarifying her relationship with the Play musician-producer. The fan site NataliePortman.com dug up a Marie Claire interview from 2000 in which the actor said "I love Moby" and asserted that she and he had "a soul connection" that is "more intense than a romance". When informed that Moby himself had hinted that it was indeed a romance, Portman responded with "We're going to have a talk, then, because that's not true. Not at all."

On May 25, Moby posted an apology to his Instagram account. Mostly he expressed regret for including Portman in his book without telling her. Addressing the creepy-older-man aspect of Portman's grievance, he wrote that "I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago."

 

 

 

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A post shared by moby xⓋx (@moby) on May 25, 2019 at 6:44am PDT

 Now, according to a post on his website, Moby has cancelled all of the upcoming dates on the book tour to promote Then It Fell Apart. Per another Instagram post, he intends to "go away for awhile."

 

 

 

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I’m going to go away for awhile. But before I do I want to apologize 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

A post shared by moby xⓋx (@moby) on May 28, 2019 at 8:52am PDT

As for how long "awhile" is, let's assume it means "as long as it takes for this whole thing to blow over".

Anyhow, we sure as hell wouldn't mess with this woman: