Tonya Harding arrives at the 75th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Tonya Harding arrives at the 75th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Tonya Harding's comeback tour just took a nightstick to the knee over her own greed and denial.
The New York Post reports that the disgraced figure skater was dumped by her own publicist/agent for demanding that journalists pay fines if they dare ask about the kneecapping Nancy Kerrigan suffered ahead of the 1994 Winter Olympics.
Michael A. Rosenberg, who represented Harding during the I, Tonya promotional tour, revealed the demand in a Facebook post (via Twitter) on Thursday.
"'I, Tonya' is now 'goodbye, Tonya,'" he wrote. "Unfortunately, we reached an impasse today on how to treat the press in the future. Her adamant and final position is that reporters must sign an affidavit stating that they won't ask her anything 'about the past' or they'll be fined $US25,000 ($32,000). Obviously, it doesn't work that way, and therefore I've chosen to terminate our business relationship."
It appears Tonya Harding is up to her old tricks. Her loyal agent/publicist Michael Rosenberg resigned today over Tonya’s insistence that reporters be fined $25,000 if they ask her anything about the past. Here’s his FB post...”I, Tonya” is “Goodbye, Tonya!” pic.twitter.com/5BqLuLLLDE
Harding, 47, has been enjoying red carpet appearances alongside Margot Robbie and Allison Janney for the sympathetic film, which paints her as a victim of abuse at the hands of her mother and her estranged then-husband, Jeff Gillooly.
It's Gillooly and bodyguard Shawn Eckardt who are painted as the true villains behind the attack on Kerrigan.
"I am sad as I write this; but at the same time I'm happy that I had such an adventure with the movie and with recreating a new positive image for her in the public eye. And I sincerely wish her the best," Rosenberg said.
Harding has long denied knowledge of the incident, but said in the lead-up to the film that she had an inkling something was being plotted.
"I knew that something was up," Harding told ABC News earlier this month of Gillooly's alleged plan to whack Kerrigan out of the competition. "I did, however, overhear them talking about stuff, where, 'Well, maybe we should take somebody out so we can make sure she gets on the team.' I go, 'What the hell are you talking about?'"
Tonya Harding arrives at the 75th annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Photo / AP.
Kerrigan is not interested in discussing the past, either. She told the Boston Globe she has been too busy to watch the film.
"I was the victim. Like, that's my role in this whole thing. That's it," Kerrigan told the paper.
Harding threatened to walk out of an interview with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain this week
Morgan said: "Maybe it suits you to play the victim, but the victim here wasn't you, it was Nancy Kerrigan who had her Olympic dream shattered."
Harding replied: "Thank you so much I appreciate being on your show, but I think I'm going to have to say have a good night."
Morgan asked: "You're going to end the interview because I think Nancy is the victim not you?"
Harding responded: "You wouldn't let me finish."
She continued: "People don't seem to understand there was a lot I was going through. That was why I chose to do this movie."
It comes as Harding's mother, Lavona Golden, told ABC News that her daughter was a serial liar and that she never threw a knife at her.
Harding has claimed she was constantly beaten by Golden, who is shown throwing a steak knife at her daughter in the movie I, Tonya, which lodged in her arm.
"I don't think that there was more than one day a week, sometimes, that I didn't get beaten," said Harding of growing up with her mother.
But Golden rejected those claims.
"Why would I throw a steak knife at anybody? She's lied so much she doesn't know what isn't a lie anymore," said Ms Golden. "I didn't abuse any of my children. Spanked? Yes, spanked. Absolutely, positively you got to show them right from wrong."
Ms Golden also denied Harding's claims that they were "trailer trash".
"Tonya herself called us trailer trash. We were never trailer trash. We had a beautiful new trailer," said Ms Golden. "We didn't live in filth or dirt or anything that I would call unusual."
Harding says her mother would beat her with anything available.
"I remember she dragged me into the bathroom and beat me with a hairbrush, literally," she said, in an incident confirmed by another woman who walked in on the beating.
