Actor Jason Alexander has publicly apologised to Courtney Stodden, fourteen and a half years after filming a 2012 comedy sketch in which he groped the then-17-year-old's breasts with a phone and joked about assaulting her once she turned 18. The apology, issued in a statement to Variety, followed an Instagram post from Stodden describing how exploited and alone she felt during filming, and matters because it reopens scrutiny of how the media trivialised her situation at the time rather than holding those around her accountable.

The sketch, a "Dr. Phil" parody called "The Donny Clay Show" made for Funny or Die, also featured Doug Hutchison, who married Stodden in 2011 when he was 51 and she was 16; the video has since been removed. Stodden, now 31 and divorced from Hutchison, welcomed Alexander's acknowledgement but urged him to back concrete action, specifically California's AB 1267 bill, which would set 18 as the minimum marriage age, and to support or donate to the anti-child-marriage charity Unchained at Last. She noted only two other US states, Mississippi and New Mexico, currently have no minimum marriage age.