Why is Alanis Morissette boycotting this HBO doc?

Can a biopic succeed if the main figure is boycotting it? The iconic 90’s singer Alanis Morissette was finally given the chance to share her rise to fame, yet the “You Oughta Know” singer has revealed that she doesn’t support the “salacious” film whatsoever.

The HBO documentary, Jagged, is set to release on the network on November 19th and already had a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday. However, Alanis Morissette had made it clear that she wouldn’t be promoting the film on either date.

Morissette calls the movie “reductive”

Alanis Morissette, 47, released one of the most popular albums of the 90s, Jagged Little Pill. The musician revealed that she had agreed to the project because she believed it would simply celebrate the 25th anniversary of her iconic album release. However, Morissette released a statement detailing she was interviewed “during a very vulnerable time” in the middle of her “third postpartum depression during 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,” Morissette said. “This is when I knew our visions were in fact painfully diverged. This was not the story I agreed to tell.

“I sit here now experiencing the full impact of having trusted someone who did not warrant being trusted,” she continued. “Not unlike many ‘stories’ and unauthorized biographies out there over the years, this one includes implications and facts that are simply not true.”

She concluded, “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 film delves into Morissette’s account of sexual assault

Since viewers called the film mostly positive about the singer, the only portion which Morissette may have disagreed with is when she is interviewed about her past sexual assault.

In Jagged, Alanis Morissette painfully discusses the alleged multiple sexual assaults she endured when only 15-years-old at the hands of music producers. She does not detail any of the incidents in-depth, yet she describes them matter of fact and as the cause of years of therapy. Before addressing the topic, Morissette does tell the director that she’s “going to need some help because I never talk about this.”

“Something about me being fifteen — that’s when I really started to be hit on,” she says in the film. “Twelve, they were a little scared. Thirteen they were a little scared, but they’d still, you know. Fourteen less scary, but still scary. Fifteen, all bets were off. Somehow that seemed like a safer number for people.”

“I just thought it was my fault, because almost every single person that I would work with, there would be some turning point where the camera would go Dutch angle,” she adds, referring to a camera technique that makes viewers uneasy. “And I would just wait for it.”

She continues, “Me not telling specific information about my experience as a teenager was almost solely around wanting to protect. Protect my parents, protect my brothers, protect future partners, protect myself, protect my physical safety.”

Director speaks about Jagged

Director Alison Klayman told Deadline, “It’s a really hard thing, I think, to see a movie made about yourself. I think she’s incredibly brave and the reaction when she saw it was that it was really –she could feel all the work, all the nuance that went into it.”

She added, “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.”

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What do you think about Alanis Morissette’s reaction to Jagged? Will you be watching the movie even if Morissette boycotts it? Let us know in the comments below.