George Clooney, who ought to know, says Hello!’s George Clooney interview is fake

If anyone should know whether George Clooney spoke to Hello! magazine about his wife‘s “most attractive feature,” it‘s Clooney himself. The trouble is, Clooney says he didn’t. At all. Not even a little bit. No such interview took place, says the actor. So where did Hello! get the raw material for the since-redacted article it published on March 30, an article apparently good enough to be quoted by Vanity Fair and other publications? Hell if he knows, but he doesn’t like where this is going. “In my experience,” said the actor, “being misquoted is not unusual, but to have an ‘exclusive interview’ completely fabricated is something new. And a very disturbing trend.” Perhaps it’s a sign that a new era is dawning in entertainment journalism, one where interviews have become so rote, repetitive, and mechanical that the stars needn’t even show up for them anymore.

For its part, Hello!, a UK-published celebrity news rag that goes back to the late 1980s, is quite disturbed indeed over this unfortunate turn of events. The publication has issued its own official, appropriately contrite statement on the brouhaha. To wit:

Hello! Magazine and the Hello! Group are very dismayed by Mr George Clooney’s statement that an interview with him that was published by the Hello! Group is not authentic. The Hello! Group bought the interview in good faith from a respectable independent agent, Famous, with whom it has dealt for many years and the agency and its writer were both credited at the end of the article in Hello! Magazine as is customary. Purchase was on the unquestionable understanding that the interview and material were correct and accurate in all respects.

In other words: “Don’t blame us. It was these other guys who screwed up.” Buck-passing, as always, endures.

[via The Wrap]