Alanis Morissette hits out at HBO documentary about her life, claiming it has a ‘salacious agenda’

Alanis Morissette says she won’t support ‘someone else’s reductive take on a story much too nuanced for them to ever grasp or tell’

Alanis Morissette has hit out at a new HBO documentary about her life and accused its makers of harbouring a “salacious agenda”, just hours before its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

The 47-year-old Canadian musician agreed to be interviewed for the film Jagged, directed by Alison Klayman, for which she sat for long hours to tell her story.

However, in a statement issued by her publicist on Tuesday, the singer said she will not be supporting the documentary as she is disappointed at how her story has been told.

Morissette claims she was interviewed “during a very vulnerable time” while in the “midst of my third postpartum depression during the lockdown”.

“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,” the singer revealed. “This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell.”

File: Alanis Morissette says she was interviewed ‘during a very vulnerable time’ for the documentary (Getty images)

The “Hand In My Pocket” singer declared that she has “chosen not to attend any event around this movie” as she is on tour right now and “not unlike many ‘stories’ and unauthorised 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,” the singer said.

The Independent has contacted HBO for comment.

In the documentary, Morissette recalled details of the time she was raped multiple times when she was 15 years old.

“It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimisation on my part,” she said in the film. “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 paedophiles. It’s all statutory rape’.”

The age of consent has been 16 since 2008, before which it was 14, according to Canadian laws.

A person under the age of 18 cannot consent if the sexual activity is with a person with authority over them. However, teenagers aged 14 or 15 can consent to non-exploitative sexual activity when the age difference is no more than five years.

Before the release of Morissette’s statement, Klayman spoke to Deadline about the singer’s possible lack of appearance at the premiere.

“It’s a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself,” Klayman said about Morissette’s reaction to the film.

“Of course, it would have been great if she could be here with us. But I’m so grateful for all the time that she did put into making this film,” the director added.

“I think she’s incredibly brave and the reaction when she saw it was that… 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.”

Jagged is set to screen on HBO on 19 November.