Zooey Deschanel is setting the record straight!
A Los Angeles Times opinion piece published Sunday claimed that the singer-actress called downtown L.A. the "worst [part] of L.A." The op-ed's author, Patt Morrison, even went so far as to call the 500 Days of Summer star a "snobby cow."
Deschanel, 31, responded to Morrison's criticism in an open letter on HelloGiggles.com. "I never spoke to you at [the BAFTA dinner]; in fact, you weren't even there," she said. "I am completely and utterly shocked that a professional journalist, whom I have never met, would take a partial quote out of context and use it as the basis for a misguided personal attack."
According to Morrison's article, a friend of the writer's spoke with Deschanel before Prince William and Kate arrived at the gala. "I just don't want them to see the worst of L.A.," Deschanel said, according to Morrison.
So what did Deschanel mean by that comment? "I did make a reference to a parking lot adjacent to the [Belasco] Theatre that had a lot of trash in it in an attempt to be humorous," she explained. "I simply said, 'It's funny they brought royalty here. There is a parking lot with trash around the corner.' It wasn't an opinion. It was true… I thought that the juxtaposition of British Royalty and trash was amusing in a high-brow + low brow sort of way, but I never said that I, personally, didn't like downtown, the Royals, or even trash."
In Morrison's disparaging op-ed, she harshly asked Deschanel if she didn't "have any homeless people there near your Westside home? Or does that not count, because they're on the beach, not the sidewalks?"
"I do not live on the Westside," Deschanel fired back. She also added, for the record: "I LOVE DOWNTOWN L.A."
"It's hard for me to comprehend why you launched such a vile and toxic blow in my direction over a sentence fragment that you did not even hear for yourself," Deschanel said. "I do hope that in the future when writing about something, especially a human being, you will consider both the facts and context before publishing your opinion."
