Brad Pitt's Apology Tour of 2011 continues!
Promoting Moneyball on The Today Show, the star once again addressed his roundly criticized dismissal of ex-wife Jennifer Aniston in last week's Parade magazine.
"I don't know what was pieced together," Pitt, 47, told Matt Lauer of the interview, in which he praised Angelina Jolie as a mom and said he struggled at "pretending" in his marriage to Aniston, 42.
"It's a shame that I can't say something nice about Angie without Jen being drug in. You know, she doesn't deserve it," Pitt said.
Of his surprising statement clarifying the remarks, he added: "I don't want them to say anything bad like that about Jen. She's a dear friend of mine."
Did Aniston call Pitt amid the brouhaha? "No," he told Lauer. "But she's also a seasoned veteran and she knows. You know, and she's a valuable person. We spent seven years together. Come on."
So, are Aniston and Pitt really still friends?
"They don't talk," an Aniston insider tells the new Us Weekly, out Friday. "She will always think of him as a jerk…She's 100 percent not speaking to him."
And, thanks to Parade-gate, that won't change anytime soon.
"He can apologize," says the source, "But these are two people you will never see in the same room together."
For more on Brad and Jen's war of words — and a surprising interaction between Pitt and Aniston's new love Justin Theroux — pick up the new Us Weekly, on stands Friday.
