After Neil Patrick Harris’ 2011 Meat Platter Inspired By Amy Winehouse’s Corpse Resurfaced, He Apologized

On July 23, 2011 Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning at age 27. Three months later, Neil Patrick Harris and his husband, David Burtka, threw a Halloween party. Now, there’s no good reason these two events should be connected, but, alas, they are. All because Neil and David made the extremely sensitive decision to include a buffet platter that was made to look like “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse”; complete with Amy’s trademark beehive hairdo, tattoos, and her bloodied, decomposing face.

The next day party guest Justin Mikita (husband of Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson) tweeted a photo of the Amy corpse platter, and people were pretty pissed off. But, because it was the olden days, NPH never addressed the controversy and we all moved on to bigger and better things (like Kim Kardashian filing for divorce from Kris Humphries after 72 days). Unfortunately for Neil, the image recently resurfaced and went viral. And, because it’s modern times, he was forced to finally issue an apology.

Here’s Neil’s apology, which he gave to Entertainment Weekly after they reached out to him about the image going viral again:

“A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago,” Harris tells EW in a statement. “It was regrettable then, and it remains regrettable now. Amy Winehouse was a once-in-a-generation talent, and I’m sorry for any hurt this image caused.”

Yadda yadda yadda. Here’s a screen capture of the original (since deleted, duh) tweet featuring the photo of the corpse platter:

Neil Patrick Harris apologizes for mocking Amy Winehouse’s death with corpse buffet platter three months after she died:

"It was regrettable then, and it remains regrettable now. Amy Winehouse was a once-in-a-generation talent, and I'm sorry for any hurt this image caused.” pic.twitter.com/pB9KRY1L4H

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) May 17, 2022

It was originally reported that the Amy corpse was a cake, but, nope, it’s somehow a meat platter. The little handwritten sign beside it reads: “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse: Beef ribs, pulled pork, chicken sausage in a spicy BBQ sauce.” The viral tweet that brought this back into the zeitgeist (the writer’s tweets have since gone private, so I guess she was getting shit from some Neil Patrick Haters) read:

“I cannot believe how many very online people over the age of 25 are just now finding out about Neil Patrick Harris’s disgusting Amy Winehouse cake…”

People online were pretty disgusted by the image. Loads of tweeters called NPH “male Ellen” (snort), claimed they were no longer fans, and brought up other controversies, like the time Neil randomly started Tony drama with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom and when Mayim Bialik claimed he stopped being friends with her because she didn’t give him a standing ovation for his 1997 performance in Rent.

Time will tell if the people accept Neil’s apology. As for Amy, I doubt she gives two shits. She’s an angel up in heaven, hanging out with her nan and making music with Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, and Louis Armstrong. What’s “NPH,” a new party drug the Earth kids are taking? Snore!

Pics: Marion Curtis / StarPix for Lionsgate & Dara Kushner/INFphoto.com