Alanis Morissette has slammed a new documentary about her career as “salacious.”
As reported here on Monday, the Ottawa-born singer refused to attend Tuesday’s premiere of Jagged at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In a statement, Morissette explained: “I have chosen not to attend any event around this movie for two reasons: one is that i am on tour right now. The other is that, 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 this/my story to be sure — I ultimately won’t be supporting someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell.”
Morissette participated in Alison Klayman’s documentary by sitting down for interviews.
“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),” said Morissette. “I was lulled into a false sense of security and their salacious agenda became apparent immediately upon my seeing the first cut of the film. This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell.”
Earlier this year, the 47-year-old singer talked to Audible about the doc. "There's footage in this that I've never even seen. As Alison's been working on it, I'm saying, ‘I don't want to see anything until the end.’ Because I think 50 percent of what she found in my archives is footage I've never even seen, some of it I don't even remember having been there.
"So it'll be entertaining I think, fingers crossed.”
In the doc, Morissette alleges she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. “It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part,” she said. “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.’”
At the time, the legal age of consent in Canada was 14 (it was raised to 16 in 2008) but it does not apply when there was a relationship of trust, authority or dependency.
Morissette did not name the men but said she told “a few people” at the time “and it kind of fell on deaf ears.
“It would usually be a stand-up, walk-out-of-the-room moment.”
The Ottawa native released Jagged Little Pill globally in 1995 after putting out two dance-pop albums in Canada in the early ‘90s. The groundbreaking collaboration with songwriter-producer Glen Ballard – which spawned hits like “You Oughta Know," "Ironic" and “Hand In My Pocket” – became one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Jagged is scheduled to debut on HBO in November.