Seinfeld star Jason Alexander is facing accusations surrounding his behavior on the set of a Funny or Die sketch from 2012.
Courtney Stodden, who catapulted to reality TV fame after marrying actor Doug Hutchison when she was just 16 and he was 51, posted a screengrab to Instagram calling out Alexander for “repeatedly rubbing his phone across my breasts” during the filming of a video that parodied Dr. Phil and other daytime talk shows.
She began the caption, “I was 17 years old in this photo.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to a representative for Alexander for comment.
“The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand,” she continued. “During this comedy sketch, Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was ‘no signal’ in my head but ‘plenty of signal’ in my chest. Later in the sketch, he joked that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me.”
Stodden, who divorced Hutchison in 2020 after nine years of marriage, is now an advocate against laws allowing minors to marry before the age of 18, posted the moment as part of her work to get California to pass AB1267. The bill, which just passed the assembly floor, would ban child marriage by making the legal minimum age 18, with no parental exceptions or judicial exceptions. Stodden’s own parents were supportive of her union with Hutchison.
Stodden’s mother signed her permission for her daughter to wed Hutchison in Nevada—making the union fully legal. Stodden alleges that after they were married, she was exploited by her husband, who she claims “groomed” and “verbally abused” her. The arrangement led to her experience with Alexander, she wrote in her post.
“I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate,” she wrote of the sketch. “The contracts were signed by adults. The paycheck went to Doug. The production moved forward. I was the only child in the room. I felt so alone.”
The media coverage of the sketch at the time portrayed Stodden as a willing participant. ABC News covered the video with the headline, “Jason Alexander Gropes Courtney Stodden in ‘Funny or Die.’” Other outlets reported the moment with nary a focus on Stodden’s age at the time of the physical contact. HuffPost, somewhat an outlier at the time, wrote in its coverage of the sketch that it “makes us want to yell, ‘Dude, she’s 17!’”
E! News published a comment from Stodden’s manager at the time, who told the outlet that the couple “can take something and like it and laugh and be OK with it.”
The Green Mile actor, now 66, has repeatedly denied her accusations about the nature of their marriage and called them financially motivated. He has also said they were genuinely “in love.”
As part of her advocacy, Stodden executive produced a biographical drama about her experience for Lifetime, titled I Was a Child Bride.
