Brad Pitt Addresses Jennifer Aniston Controversy with Matt Lauer

While he’s trying to promote his latest film, “Moneyball,” which arrives in select theaters today, Brad Pitt is also forced to fend off negative press for a series of comments he made about Jennifer Aniston in a recent interview. Matt Lauer also asked him about that.

Brad stopped by The Today Show to promote the film and, at the same time, set the record straight on the remarks that got fans so inflamed since they came out in press last week.

They made it look as if Brad was saying he had a boring marriage and life with Jennifer Aniston, and that he was happy he was out of the relationship.

On The Today, he goes a bit more into specifics, as the video below will confirm: he was only trying to praise his current partner Angelina Jolie and talk about how happy he was a family man (they have 6 children together).

Brad promises he had no intention of doing that at the expense of his ex, a woman with whom he’s still friends and has nothing but love and respect for.

“I don’t know what was pieced together,” he says of the interview that came out in Parade, refusing Lauer’s offer to read it out to him.

“I don’t read these things, by choice, I don’t. I don’t wanna be encumbered by any of that. I know my intentions, and I know what I believe, and I know things get misconstrued. I live outside of that, and it’s much healthier,” Pitt goes on to say.

“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. I don't want them to say anything bad like that about Jen. She’s a dear friend of mine,” the actor explains.

Jennifer did not call him after the interview came out, as speculation would have it, to ask for a retraction – and Brad wouldn’t expect any less of her, since she too is a “seasoned veteran.”

Still, it pains him to hear that she’s being abused in the press for something he said or, better yet, for something that was constructed to sound worse than he meant it.

Hoping to put the scandal behind him, Brad has learned his lesson. “Don’t talk,” he says.

“I don’t wanna live on guard and I should be more on guard, I guess... it’s always been a part of the territory... it comes up every cycle. I’ve got a knack for stepping into [expletive]. And I do every year or so... And it’s OK. It’s all right,” he adds.

Check out the video below to hear Brad’s explanation, in his own words.