Alanis Morissette blasts documentary ‘Jagged’ as ‘salacious’
Just hours before the HBO documentary “Jagged” was to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday, Alanis Morissette criticized the film about her life as “reductive” and “salacious.”
Morissette participated in the film, directed by Alison Klayman, sitting for lengthy interviews. But in a statement issued by her publicist, the Canadian musician said she would not be supporting the film, named after her breakthrough 1995 album, “Jagged Little Pill.”
“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),” wrote 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.”
Morissette didn’t specify her issues with “Jagged,” which is to premiere Nov. 19 on HBO. But its most sensitive material includes Morissette discussing sexual encounters when she was 15 that she calls statutory rape.
Representatives for Klayman did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday. In an interview with Deadline Hollywood published Tuesday, Klayman, whose films include “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” and the Steve Bannon documentary “Brink,” lamented that Morissette would not be there for the premiere.
“It’s a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself,” Klayman said. “I think she’s incredibly brave and the reaction when she saw it was that it was a really — she could feel all the work, all the nuance that went into it. And again, she gave so much of her time and so much of her effort into making this and I think that the movie really speaks for itself.”
Morissette is currently on tour and is to perform in Nashville, Tenn., on Friday.