What goes around comes back around. Neil Patrick Harris apologized after a controversial photo from a 2011 Halloween party sparked backlash.
“A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago,” Harris, 48, said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly on Monday, May 16. “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.”
Earlier this month, the resurfaced snap — which shows a meat platter modeled after the late Amy Winehouse’s likeness — made the rounds on social media. “I cannot believe how many very online people over the age of 25 are just now finding out about Neil Patrick Harris’s disgusting Amy Winehouse cake,” writer Ashley Reed tweeted on Friday, May 13, hinting that her opinion of the actor changed significantly because of the incident.
The “Rehab” singer died of alcohol poisoning at 27 years old in July 2011, three months before the How I Met Your Mother alum hosted the Halloween party with his husband, David Burtka. A photo of the charcuterie board was originally shared via Twitter by actor Justin Mikita, who is married to Modern Family alum Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “Look who showed up at @ActuallyNPH and @GourmetMD’s Halloween party last night. Looking good,” Mikita, now 36, wrote at the time in 2011.
In the picture, a small sign next to the platter reads “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse” and lists the types of meat included on the plate: “Beef ribs, pulled pork, chicken sausage in a spicy BBQ sauce.”
The resurgence of the photo sparked outrage. “Society is way overdue for a discussion about the way Amy Winehouse was treated in the early 2000s and 2010s by the misogynistic celebrity media machine and the people who were a captive audience to it. Neil Patrick Harris’ f – – ked up corpse cake is just the tip of the iceberg,” one Twitter user claimed, while others on social media were shocked by the “graphic” and “inappropriate” image.
Harris had not publicly addressed the controversy until now, though the photo has been dug up more than once. The Emmy winner has been married to Burtka, 46, since 2014. They share 11-year-old twins Harper and Gideon.
“It’s a lot harder for gay guys [to have kids], although we tried!” Burtka joked on The Wendy Williams Show in 2015, explaining that there were “two different women involved” in the process. “There was an egg donor, a wonderful woman who was anonymous. We took two of our best guys and implanted them into her eggs, two different eggs.”
The professional chef told host Wendy Williams that he thinks Harper might be biologically his daughter, while Gideon is more like Harris. “She’s like, ‘Hey everybody, I’m here!” He said of the pair’s daughter. “[Gideon’s] a little more heady and intellectual.”
