Alanis Morissette has withdrawn support for Jagged, the HBO documentary that chronicles her teenage rise to fame and the release of her landmark 1995 album Jagged Little Pill.
Morissette did not attend any events surrounding the release of Jagged, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th.
In a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter, Morissette criticized the “salacious agenda” of the Alison Klayman-directed documentary.
“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,” Morissette wrote.
“This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell.”
Morissette went on to claim that the film is riddled with mistruths. “Not unlike many ‘stories’ and unauthorized biographies out there over the years, this one includes implications and facts that are simply not true,” she said.
In Jagged, Alanis Morissette revealed that she was a victim of statutory rape at 15. “It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimization on my part,” she said.
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“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.”
The age of consent in Canada when Morissette was a teenager was 14 years old. In 2008, the age of consent was raised to 16.
“This was not the story I agreed to tell,” Morissette continued. “I sit here now experiencing the full impact of having trusted someone who did not warrant being trusted.”
In an interview with Deadline, director Allison Klayman delved into Morissette’s reaction to the film, “It’s a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself,” Kayman 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.”
