A day after model Kendall Jenner took to Twitter to deny that she spoke to Us Weekly about her father, Bruce Jenner, the magazine has issued a retraction.
“Editors of Us have concerns about the veracity of this interview and the circumstances under which it was obtained,” the magazine wrote in a statement on its website. “We would like to retract the story entirely and have removed it from our website. We sincerely apologize to Ms. Jenner and her family.”
The story entitled “Kendall Jenner Breaks Silence on Bruce Jenner’s Transition” was published on Wednesday as an “exclusive” interview with the model and half-sister of the Kardashians.
In the purported interview, Kendall Jenner was quoted talking about her father’s reported transition to a woman.
After the Us story was published, Jenner challenged the validity of the entire piece.
“How is it legal for someone to ‘quote’ someone and publish it if in fact you never said what was quoted,” she tweeted.
She later said that she had never even spoken to the pop culture magazine.
“Shame on Us Weekly for making up quotes,” she added on Twitter. “I NEVER said those things. I never spoke to them.”
In its retraction, Us Weekly mentioned that the interview was “allegedly conducted by an independent freelance journalist” during the March 14 taping of the Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber in Los Angeles.
Once Jenner denied that the interview ever took place, the magazine reached out to the freelancer, who stood by his story.
“He stood by the interview, and continues to maintain that the quotes are accurate,” the retraction read.
Yet, after attempting to reconfirm his account, the magazine chose to retract the story.
The story has been removed from the Us Weekly website with links to the story now showing up as 404 error.
However, a cached version of the article still exists.
Variety has reported that Bruce Jenner, a former Olympian, was in talks to cooperate with a documentary about his reported transition to being a woman. These talks have reportedly stalled.
