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George Clooney Debunks ‘Exclusive Interview’ With Hello! Magazine, Says It Was Fake

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 21:34 PST, Apr 1, 2016

George Clooney wants to set the record straight after an article published by Hello! Magazine quoting an alleged “exclusive interview” with Clooney about his marital life with Amal Clooney was fabricated. The so-called interview never actually happened.

It’s a sign of the times that various tabloids love to publish rumors of the impending divorce of various celebrities, especially in the case of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. There’s nothing like a juicy rumor to up the page views with a suitable click-bait headline.

Similar stories keep cropping up about the recently wed George Clooney and his lovely wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. However, in this case they were, at least, based on a more positive rumor.

In the current story, Hello! Magazine reportedly published an article about the famous celebrity couple including quotes which George Clooney says are completely false. He said the so-called “exclusive interview” never happened and he now wants to set the record straight.

Clooney, 54, told ET in a statement on Friday that the quotes in the Hello! Magazine article, attributed to him and about his wife, Amal Clooney, are false. He said the magazine had printed an “exclusive interview” with him that has been widely picked up by the media and reprinted.

“Outlets like Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, The Sun, and The Evening Standard have all printed my exclusive interview and credited Hello! Magazine. The problem is that I have not given an interview to Hello! Magazine and the quotes attributed to me are not accurate.”

George Clooney went on to say that in his experience, it is not unusual to be misquoted, “but to have an ‘exclusive interview’ completely fabricated is something new,” adding that this is a “very disturbing trend.”

Reportedly in the Hello! Magazine article, Clooney was quoted as saying he has a rule that he and Amal are never apart for a week and that they “stay in touch via social media.”

ET reports that after the contact from George Clooney, they deleted their article quoting the so-called “exclusive interview,” replacing it with the current story about the debunked news.

After the news hit the media, Hello! Magazine responded, saying in a statement that they were “dismayed” that the interview quoted by them was “not authentic.” They said they had purchased the interview from an independent agent that they trust. The statement read as follows.

“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 the statement, the Hello! Group went on to express its deepest respect for both George Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney and offered its “sincere commitment to respectable and accurate journalism.”

According to AOL, the Hello! Magazine article does not currently appear to be online and has most likely been deleted. Reportedly, Vanity Fair had a version of the story headlined, “George Clooney Explains Why Marriage to Amal Alamuddin Is Going So Well,” but that article is no longer online.

While Hello! Magazine said they had purchased the interview from a reliable source, Deadline Hollywood reports that the content appears to be a compilation of comments from previous press conferences and other source material, presented as an “exclusive interview.”

There is one article still out there reporting on the fake interview as US Weekly doesn’t seem to have heard the news.

[Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images]

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