Moby addresses Natalie Portman dating controversy again: ‘It’s hard for me to make sense of it’

Years after musician Moby said he briefly dated actress Natalie Portman, he looked back at the controversy, admitting the entire situation doesn't make sense to him. In his 2019 memoir, ‘Then It Fell Apart,’ the now 60-year-old alleged he had briefly dated the Black Swan actress in 1999 when he was 33 and she was 18, which Portman emphatically denied and called “creepy.”In an interview with The Times, Moby admits, “It’s hard for me to make sense of it.” Moby remained steadfast in their short-lived relationship in the years since, but he now has a slightly different view. When asked by the outlet if it’s now “a sour episode between two people who seem decent,” the 60-year-old replied, “Insofar as I’m capable of perspective on that, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying.” As for Natalie, after Moby included the mention of her in his memoir, the now 44-year-old didn’t hold back in sharing how she felt about their differing understandings of their encounter. “I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating,” she told Harper's Bazaar UK in 2019, “because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me."The way she remembered it, they met after one of his concerts, where he suggested the two could be friends. “He was on tour, and I was working, shooting a film,” she said, “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.” Not long after, Moby addressed her denial and issued an apology to her. Still, he didn’t agree with Natalie’s recollection of the events as being “creepy.” In an interview with The Guardian, Moby said, “I wouldn't use that word.”Even now that years have passed, it seems Moby and Portman’s recollections of the encounter stand worlds apart.