Actor Neil Patrick Harris issued an apology nearly eleven years after the fact for serving a meat platter molded to look like the rotting corpse of singer Amy Winehouse at his 2011 Halloween party — just months after the 6-time Grammy winner died.
“Modeling food after a dead person is an objectively disgusting move, one made even more disgusting when you remember that this platter made its debut so shortly after Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning at the mere age of 27,” Jezebel reported.
A photo of the platter — which included “beef ribs, pulled pork, chicken sausage in a spicy BBQ sauce” — circulated on social media again recently, prompting the “How I Met Your Mother” star to address the issue more than a decade later.
WARNING: Graphic photo below:
Neil Patrick Harris apologizes for mocking Amy Winehouse’s death with corpse buffet platter three months after she died:
"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.” pic.twitter.com/pB9KRY1L4H
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) May 17, 2022
“A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago,” Harris told Entertainment Weekly in a statement, which the outlet published Monday. “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.”
Winehouse was just 27 years old at the time of her death, which was the result of alcohol poisoning. She had a long history of both alcohol and drug abuse, and had reportedly been doing better before returning to drinking in the days before she died.
According to Dr. Christina Romete, who reportedly paid Winehouse a house call the night before she passed away, the singer knew she was in trouble and reassured the doctor that she was not at risk of suicide.
“I don’t want to die,” Winehouse said, according to Romete, who also said that she had repeatedly refused to seek any mental health treatment because she feared it might interfere with her creative process.
“She was one of the most intelligent young women I’ve ever met,” Romete said during a hearing related to Winehouse’s death. “She was very determined to do everything her way, including her therapy. She had very strict views on that.”
She went on to say that Winehouse admitted that she had started drinking again around July 20th — just three days before she passed — and that the night before she died she had seemed “calm and somewhat guilty” and despite being obviously inebriated, she had been “able to hold a conversation.”
Winehouse’s death was officially recorded as death by “misadventure,” as the St Pancras coroner, Dr Shirley Radcliffe, explained, “She voluntarily consumed alcohol, a deliberate act that took an unexpected turn in that it caused her death.”