The actor slammed misleading stories that “cherry-pick” to entice readers, running headlines like “Bateman gets sober through the help of his wife.”

Jason Bateman calls out ‘clickbait’ articles about his sobriety journey and wife’s role

The actor slammed misleading stories that "cherry-pick" to entice readers, running headlines like "Bateman gets sober through the help of his wife."

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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February 26, 2026 11:44 a.m. ET

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Jason Bateman at the Governors Awards in November 2025. Credit:

Amy Sussman/Getty

Jason Bateman is setting the record straight on some of the recent headlines about him and his wife, Amanda Anka.**

The actor criticized stories targeting the couple, specifically public sightings of them and Anka's involvement in his sobriety journey, on *Jimmy Kimmel Live*. **

"What I saw when I googled you were the words, 'Jason Bateman makes rare red carpet appearance with wife, Amanda Anka, at the premiere of new show *DTF St. Louis*,'" host Jimmy Kimmel said during their interview on Wednesday's episode. "And I thought the word 'rare' was interesting."

Jason Bateman and his wife, Amanda Anka, in Beverly Hills in February 2017.

David Livingston/Getty

"Well, here's the thing, Jimmy," Bateman responded. "In today's media climate, these people, they like clickbait. It's a phrase where they gotta put a headline up there to make people get interested and go, 'Oh, I wonder what that is! It's 'rare,' so I guess I better click on that to see because they're never out together.'"**

He went to explain that wasn't accurate. "Well, we're always out together," Bateman said, "and I have not yet been to a premiere without my wife for about 27 years."**

When asked if he would dispute the claim, Bateman replied, "Yes, I would challenge that."

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That wasn't the only headline that the *Zootopia 2* star took umbrage with in recent weeks. Bateman added that stories about Anka's role in his sobriety journey began to pop up after a magazine feature covering his childhood years up to the present was published.**

"Part of what's in there is I liked to party during my 20s and stuff, and then put that stuff down when I was 30, 31, something like that," he said. "So that's like 20, over 25 years ago."**

But, he continued, "fringe sites" took the interview and began to "cherry-pick these little things that could be clickbait" to entice readers, running headlines like "'Bateman gets sober through the help of his wife.'"

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"Well, I gotta click on that," Bateman said, adding sarcastically, "I didn’t know Bateman had a problem! I didn't know that he was suffering, and thank God he's pulled out of it!"

Jason Bateman and Amanda Anka in the early 2000s.

KMazur/WireImage

Bateman explained that he found himself clicking on these articles and reading the first sentence only to discover that the headline wasn't telling the full story. "And then you feel like an idiot for clicking on it," he added.

Kimmel, ever the comedian, couldn't help but find the humor in the situation, teasing, "If they can't keep you from clicking on a story about you, how do you expect anyone else to resist clicking on that?"**

Bateman joked back that he "didn't need" to read the articles, but was "tempted to just to see those old, big, bloated pictures of me when I was using."

"Collars outside the jacket, you know?" he added.**

The star discussed his hard living years ago — and how his wife helped him put an end to it — in a recent interview with *The Hollywood Reporter*. "Amanda and I definitely had a few negotiations about the point at which the [partying] spigot was going to completely turn off," Bateman said. "She'd be like, 'This drip, drip, drip is annoyingly unpredictable, Jason.'"**

He continued, "She didn't demand that I completely absolve, but that was sort of the back-and-forth, and I was like, 'Well, I feel like my [sobriety] ETA is six months away, but if I could land this plane now, it would alleviate a lot of the tension, so let's just f‑‑‑ing do it.'"

Watch Bateman call out misleading stories about him and his marriage in the clip above.

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