Neil Patrick Harris recently found himself under fire for an ill-advised meat-buffet platter at a 2011 Halloween party thrown by husband David Burkta. That’s the case due to a resurfaced photo, which is, uh, still out there and about as unpalatable as what happened to Neil’s Gone Girl character. The grotesque party favor in question was themed, “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse,” which wasn’t a fantastic idea then (the iconic singer died in summer 2011 at age 27), and it’s still not a fantastic idea now.
After Harris did some Twitter promotion for his new Netflix show, Uncoupled, his replies were inundated with remarks about this lapse in judgment, and he eventually caught wind of the resurfaced photo. In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, he’s now attempting to apologize for the controversy:
“A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago,” Harris tells EW in a statement. “It was regrettable then, and it remains regrettable now. Amy Winehouse was a once-in-a-generation talent, and I’m sorry for any hurt this image caused.”
Yeah, the situation isn’t a good one by any stretch, and Halloween is rife with potential for backlash (so many appropriating costumes out there) on a number of levels. In Neil’s case, it’s extremely hard to fathom how anyone would have (literally) stomached that joke back in 2011, and yes, he did apologize, although people probably won’t seen forget. It doesn’t bode well for his Netflix show’s debut, but the streaming numbers will eventually tell that final tale.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)