Moby has scrapped his overseas book tour in the wake of criticism of a claim in it that he dated actress Natalie Portman.
The artist was scheduled to start a week-long promotional blitz for the now aptly-titled Then It Fell Apart in the UK and Ireland on Saturday.
“Moby is cancelling all upcoming public appearances for the foreseeable future,” reads a message on his official website. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause … Moby is happy to provide signed bookplates to everyone who bought tickets to these events.”
On Instagram, Moby explained: “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.”
In an earlier post, he said that he is “being told to stay silent” but wants to use the media attention to spotlight causes that are important to him. “I'm NOT trying to evade responsibility,” he added. “I made my apology and i 100% stand by it.”
In Then It Fell Apart, Moby recalled that he met Portman when he was 33 and she was 20. He flirted with him, he claimed, in his dressing room after a concert. He wrote: “For a few weeks I had tried to be Natalie’s boyfriend, but it hadn’t worked out. 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.”
Portman recalled things differently. She told Harper’s Bazaar: “I was surprised to hear that he characterized 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,” she explained. “He said I was 20; I definitely wasn’t. I was a teenager. I had just turned 18.”
Portman said she was a fan of Moby and went to one of his shows. “When we met after the show, he said, ‘Let’s be friends.’
“He was on tour and I was working, shooting a film, so we only hung out a handful of times before I realized that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate.”
Moby responded to Portman’s comments by doubling down. “We did, in fact, date,” he wrote on Instagram.
“I can’t figure out why she would actively misrepresent the truth about our (albeit brief) involvement. I completely respect Natalie’s possible regret in dating me (to be fair, I would probably regret dating me, too), but it doesn’t alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history.”
As the backlash intensified, Moby publicly apologized to Portman.
“It was truly inconsiderate of me to not let her know about her inclusion in the book beforehand, and equally inconsiderate for me to not fully respect her reaction,” the musician wrote in a message on Instagram. “I hate that I might have caused her and her family distress.”
He admitted it was “inconsiderate” not to let Portman know ahead of time that she was mentioned in his book.
“Also I accept that given the dynamic of our almost 14 year age difference I absolutely should've acted more responsibly and respectfully when Natalie and I first met almost 20 years ago.”