Neil Patrick Harris has issued an apology for a resurfaced photo of a Halloween party where he and his husband served a meat platter styled to look like Amy Winehouse’s decaying corpse.
The platter, which made light of the late singer’s untimely death, included a sign that read: “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse.”
In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, the How I Met Your Mother star said: “A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago. It was regrettable then, and it remains regrettable now.”
He added that “Amy Winehouse was a once-in-a-generation talent” and that he was “sorry for any hurt this image caused”.
Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning after going on a drinking binge after a stint of abstinence in 2011 in London. She was 27.
According to Buzzfeed, the photo from Harris’s party had first been shared by actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s husband Justin Mikita on Twitter. Both had attended the party.
Mitka had quickly deleted the post, but not before it was screenshotted by many users.
“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,” one person wrote. “Neil Patrick Harris’ f***ed up corpse cake is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Another user added: “Y’all, the Neil Patrick Harris/Amy Winehouse thing is even worse than it looks because that wasn’t a cake, it was a meat platter made to look like her dead body. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google it. You will be disgusted and no longer a NPH fan.”
“This happened 11 years ago but kind of got brushed under the rug, but basically Neil Patrick Harris threw a party right after Amy Winehouse died and served a meat platter that was made to look like her corpse. And it was labeled ‘The Corpse of Amy Winehouse.’ It’s really bad,” another person wrote.
