Selma Blair Says She ‘Did Not Intend to Harm Anyone’ After Flight Incident
When representatives for actress Selma Blair finally addressed her arrest following a chaotic Delta Airlines flight to New York, their message leaned on explanation rather than outright denial. Blair “did not intend to harm anyone,” her publicist said, insisting “there was much more to this story” than the headlines suggested.
Central to that explanation is Blair’s long battle with multiple sclerosis (MS): the statement said she “experienced a medical emergency on the flight,” and her publicist pointed to an underlying neurological condition that “bears directly on how a medical episode presents to people who do not know her.”
Formally, the 54-year-old Legally Blonde star faces charges of assaulting an officer and a nurse after being pulled off the plane, plus separate allegations that she assaulted two flight attendants on board. Her team pushed back hard on how that version of events had spread, arguing it was “built almost entirely on a police statement and a decade-old headline” and flatly denying claims circulating in the media that she had tried to force open the aircraft door.
Blair went public with her MS diagnosis in 2018 and said in 2021 that the disease was in remission, though her publicist acknowledged the Hellboy and Cruel Intentions actress “still has bad days.” The statement also disclosed a second condition, pseudobulbar affect (PBA), which the US National Institutes of Health associates with brain injury or neurological dysfunction — it can trigger sudden, uncontrollable laughing, crying or anger that bear no relation to what a person is actually feeling.
Her publicist called the progress Blair has made physically since her diagnosis “nothing short of a miracle,” while noting she continues to live with daily pain. “Selma had never been arrested before Sunday night,” the statement added. “There is much more to this story than has been reported and we ask to consider the entirety of the facts before rushing to judgement, whether in the courtroom or in the court of public opinion.”
The altercation unfolded on a Sunday-evening flight out of Los Angeles. New York’s Port Authority said it had fielded a call reporting “a physically abusive passenger” aboard the aircraft, and confirmed two flight attendants were hurt, one seriously enough to need hospital treatment. Air traffic control audio later obtained by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, caught the pilot radioing ahead for medical help and citing injuries that included “a bloody nose” and “some bite marks.”
Blair herself was arrested and hospitalised. The FBI has since issued her a federal summons over a charge of assault within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the US tied to the mid-air altercation, while two further assault charges were brought separately in state court once she was off the plane. She has pleaded not guilty across the board and is currently out on bail.
Source: BBC News