He became known to the British as a public entertainer, joking in particular about his sexuality, before becoming a conduit for conspiracy theories on his YouTube channel. Saturday, the TimesTHE Sunday Times and the British channel Channel 4 vshannel that Russell Brand is accused of rape, sexual assault and psychological violence. In a joint investigation published Saturdaythese three media give the floor to four women, who tell how they were victims of the actor between 2006 and 2013. Russell Brand, aged 48, refuted these allegations in a video published Friday, before the publication of the investigation .
Alice, sixteen years old at the time, says she was approached by the actor in the street, before he convinced her to come to his house. He was then 30 years old. She describes the relationship as “a source of isolation” and recounts a scene of sexual abuse. Another woman accuses Russell Brand of raping her at his home. A third woman claims to have been the victim of sexual abuse at the actor’s home. A fourth who worked with him said he would have displayed his penis in front of her. The investigation also denounces incidents when the actor worked for the BBC and Channel 4.
The BBC announced Sunday that it will “urgently examine the issues raised” by these allegations while Channel 4 announced the opening of an internal investigation and removed all content linked to Russell Brand available on replay. Monday afternoon, London police wrote in a press release having “been informed of a sexual assault which allegedly took place in Soho, central London, in 2003”. At the time of publishing this article, Russell Brand had not reacted to this new accusation.
Recruited then fired
The acts presented in the British media investigation allegedly took place between 2006 and 2013, when Russell Brand became a personality in the United Kingdom and Hollywood. He began to make himself known across the Channel in the early 2000s, participating in the Edinburgh theater festival. On September 12, 2001, he was fired from MTV after showing up to work dressed as Osama bin Laden. The following year, it was Xfm radio who separates from him after he watched live pornography. Two years later, he began presenting an entertainment show on Channel 4, Big Brother’s Big Mouth. Between 2006 and 2008, he presented a program on Radio 2, one of the BBC radio stations. He was fired after left voicemails during the show to Andrew Sachs, a comedian, in which he suggests that he had a relationship with his granddaughter.
The actor acquired notoriety across the Channel by building an image and an immediately recognizable style, from his haircut to his jeans, including his speech, which is rapid and which switches between the sustained and popular level. He speaks openly about his addictions and his visits to detoxification centers. A former heroin addict, he confided in the mid-2000s to being addicted to sex and made many jokes on the subject. THE Sun named him “fucker of the year” three times. He wrote two autobiographies and in 2014 published Revolution, in which he preaches the end of capitalism. The British press trashes the book, pointing out inconsistencies and an “atrocious” style, according to the Guardian. During an interview to promote his book, he try to kiss a journalist from Financial Times. The same year, he admitted to having never voted.
The publication of Revolution comes after a visit to Hollywood. Russell Brand films there in comedies: Without Sarah nothing is going wellreleased in 2008, or American Trip, in 2010, with Jonah Hill. The same year, he married singer Katy Perry. A union that ensures international notoriety. He left her by SMS a few moments before a concert in 2011.
At the same time, he is active on the Internet, first on Myspace then on Twitter. He eventually reinvented himself as a wellness guru and conspiracy theory promoter on YouTube, where his channel currently has more than 6.6 million subscribers. There’s promotes ivermectin against Covid-19, an unproven use of this veterinary drug, before withdrawing. Seeming to distance himself from a British audience, he invites Tucker Carlson, an American, behind his microphone fired by Fox News. Russell Brand also hands his microphone to Robert Kennedy Junior, who has been promoting false information about vaccination for years and who has declared himself a candidate for the American presidential election.
In his videos, Russell Brand denounces the information as “propaganda” and points the finger at “the mainstream media”. Anticipating the publication of the investigation Timesof Sunday Times and Channel 4, he released a video on Friday in which he “absolutely refutes” the allegations published against him. “These allegations belong to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in newspapers all the time, when I was in movies. As I have written extensively in my books, I had loose morals. During this period, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I have always been transparent about this. » Russell Brand then takes an almost conspiratorial tone to question the publication of these revelations. “Seeing this transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me wonder: is there a program [caché] stake ? », he tells his subscribers. He then argues that testimonies “directly contradict” the allegations published in the British press. Without, for the moment, making them public.