A years-long investigation by a trio of news organisations makes a multitude of serious claims against Russell Brand, the longtime comedian and TV presenter who has starred in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek. But as he gained notoriety, an alleged pattern of sexual assault and coercion emerged, per a report published today in The Times. Four women, including one who was 16 at the time of the alleged events, say Brand sexually assaulted them in interactions that occurred between 2006 and 2013, while numerous others make claims of harassment, predatory behaviour, and abuse.
Since his period of Hollywood stardom about a decade ago, Brand has reinvented himself as a political pundit and author and again as a vaccine-skeptic social media star with a conservative fan base. He took to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday with a video seemingly intended as a response to the investigation from The Times, The Sunday Times, and Channel 4 Dispatches.
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In the video he claimed that two “mainstream media” publications with a “serious and concerted agenda” were planning to release an investigation about his consensual relationships, but that the story had “metastasised into something criminal.” He also accused the mainstream media of a co-ordinated attack and said that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives. Vanity Fair reached out to Brand’s representatives for comment following his post to X, but has not received a response as of publication time.
“The relationships that I had were absolutely always consensual,” Brand says in the video. “I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent. And I’m being transparent about it now .. I don’t mind them using my books and my stand-up to talk about my promiscuous consensual conduct in the past. What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.”