Video Of Late Comedian Gilbert Gottfried At Center Of Phoebe Bridgers' Court Battle With Producer
April 19 2023, Published 10:00 a.m. ET
The late comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been dragged into Phoebe Bridgers' battle with music producer Chris Nelson, RadarOnline.com has learned.
As we first reported, in November, Bridgers shut down a $3.8 million defamation lawsuit brought by Nelson. In his lawsuit, the producer accused the singer of spreading lies about him on social media.
Nelson dated a woman named Emily Bannon. Bridgers and Bannon also had a relationship. In court documents, Nelson said after his relationship with Bannon ended, Bridgers and his ex went on a “revenge plot” to ruin him.
Bridgers wrote on Instagram, “I witnessed and can personally verify much of the abuse (grooming, stealing, violence) perpetuated by Chris Nelson.”
The singer then directed her followers to check out Bannon’s page — which accused the producer of racially motivated violence, hate crimes and fraud.
Bridgers claimed her remarks were protected by the First Amendment. A judge ended up siding with the singer and dismissed the entire lawsuit.
Recently, Bridgers went back to court accusing Nelson of leaking portions of her April 8, 2022, deposition transcript on his social media. Bridgers said the court had ordered the transcript to be sealed.
“His violation, therefore, was willful. He had the ability to comply with the Court’s Protective Order by refraining from posting the Confidential deposition testimony on his Instagram story,” her attorney wrote.
Bridgers’ attorney said the leak was part of his “obsessive desire to embarrass Phoebe.”
Her motion read, “Mr. Nelson has further displayed his obsession with embarrassing Ms. Bridgers by creating a website with the domain theproblemwithphoebebridgers.com, where he has published Ms. Bridgers’s text messages and suggesting he will publish her deposition transcript and video, listing them as “Coming Soon.”
Bridgers demanded Nelson be found in contempt and order $7k in sanctions.
In response, Nelson said the deposition transcript at issue has been removed from Instagram. He explained, “In February 2022, the late Gilbert Gottfried created a video for me.” He said the video has been removed.
Nelson claimed, “I never intended to violate any of the court’s confidentiality orders and have no intention of violating any of the court’s confidentially orders.”
“I never had any intention of selling the deposition transcript or deposition video of Ms. Bridgers nor did I make any statement that I was selling or intended to sell the deposition transcript or video,” he said.
The video in question was allegedly created for Nelson by the comedian via the Cameo app. In the clip, the late comedian disparaged Bridgers.
Gottfried passed away on April 12, 2022. Nelson said the video was created approximately four months before Ms. Bridgers was deposed in this matter.
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Nelson argued his social media posts did not violate the court order. “The Protective Order does not prevent Mr. Nelson from exercising his free speech rights to make statements about facts he learned independent of Ms. Bridgers’ deposition such as before or even afterwards,” he said.
The judge has yet to rule.
