From friends to foes. Kevin Hart is “in complete disbelief” upon his close acquaintance Jonathan Todd Jackson being charged with extorting him.
The 38-year-old comedian seemingly addressed the scandal via Twitter on Wednesday, May 2. “Mind blown….Hurt….at a loss for words and simply in compete disbelief at the moment,” he wrote. “WOW.”
Hart’s cryptic tweet comes hours after the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office announced that Jackson, 41, was charged “with trying to coerce actor Kevin Hart to pay him for a video that was surreptitiously recorded” in August 2017.
Jackson faces two felony accounts, one for attempted extortion and another for extortion by threatening letter, and faces a maximum sentence of four years in jail. He is also set to be arraigned on Wednesday.
According to TMZ, the Jumanji actor and Jackson have been friends for more than 15 years. They also costarred in Hart’s 2014 flick Think Like a Man Too.
Hart revealed in September 2017 that he was being extorted after making “a bad error in judgement and putting myself in an environment where only bad things can happen and they did.”
TMZ reported soon after that Hart was being blackmailed for a videotape that featured him engaging in sexually suggestive conduct with a woman in Las Vegas. Hart’s wife, Eniko Parrish, was eight months pregnant at the time.
The Central Intelligence actor admitted to cheating on Parrish, 33, three months later during an interview with The Breakfast Club radio show. “Me being wrong, I’m going to face the music,” he said at the time. “I’m gonna go home, I’m gonna address it, I’m gonna make my wife fully aware of what’s going on in the situation that I have now put us in and I’m hoping that she has a heart to where she can forgive me and understand that this is not going to be a reoccurring thing and allow me to recover from my f—king massive mistake.”
Parrish welcomed the couple’s first child together, son Kenzo Kash Hart, in November. Hart also shares son Hendrix, 10, and daughter Heaven, 13, with ex-wife Torrei Hart.
