Russell Brand: Open Secret (2026) Movie Script

[lightbulb buzzing]
[lightbulb clicks]
["In the Hall of the Mountain King" plays]
Can-can-can you hear me in the back?
Can you hear me?
What about now?
[muffled] What about now?
-[audience applauding]
-[man 1] Brilliant, Mr. Russell Brand!
Stand-up comedy!
This is a specimen bottle! Smell that!
[audience laughs]
[woman 1] He was this quirky,
British bad-boy figure.
It stinks of opinions in here!
Have you done an opinion?
This is Big Brother's Big Mouth!
Russell Brand!
Please welcome Russell Brand,
ladies and gentlemen.
["In the Hall of the Mountain King"
continues playing]
-[paparazzi clamoring]
-[camera shutters clicking]
[man 2] He was like a rock star.
Selling out arenas.
Making TV shows
that people watch in the millions.
[man 3] For Russell, it's like Shangri-La.
[fans clamoring]
I'm not doing anything
other than what I've done all my life.
I'm single. I like girls.
[music intensifies]
[Russell] I get off on it, man.
Is that a crime?
Does that make me a bad person?
[song crescendos, fades]
[woman 2] People were afraid
of their name being put out there.
-That his lawyers would come after them.
-[ominous music playing]
[woman 3] I kept saying no.
I said, "Stop, Russell, stop."
"Please don't, please."
I begged him. I literally begged him.
I've had this feeling my whole life
that something bad's gonna happen to me.
[man 4 on TV] The Met police say
they've received allegations
of a number of offenses
in London and elsewhere.
[woman 4] Russell Brand under fire
after multiple women
have accused him of sexual assault.
Poverty and anonymity
to fame and celebrity.
-Yes.
-And you're choosing fame.
Conan, in conclusion,
the sexual opportunities
are far greater in celebrity.
They are.
-There's barely any comparison.
-[audience cheering and applauding]
[ominous music continues]
[music fades]
-[man 5] Russell! Russell!
-[crowd clamoring]
[woman 5] I love you!
[man 5] Russell!
-[man 6] Russell Brand!
-[pensive music playing]
It started out as a story
that was sort of circulating,
and to be completely upfront,
it's a story
that is not in the public domain.
It has not been told.
[man 7] Russell, in front of you, man.
[Nish] People were threatened
that if they spoke about it,
there would be
legal action brought against them.
People started to get really frustrated
because you kept hearing that
something was going to come out publicly,
and it just never did,
and so comics started talking about
Russell Brand's behavior in their shows.
Probably the reason
I hate him so much is because, um
[audience laughing]
I'm a dad, and I've got this fear
that one day my daughters
will bring something like that home.
[Harriet] From what I've heard,
journalists saw
what comedians were talking about,
and that's what led them to investigate.
[pensive music continues]
[woman 2] I began looking at Russell Brand
in January 2019.
[music crescendos, stops]
There were a few comedians
who were being quite public
in-- in calling Russell Brand out.
They would say at the end of their shows,
um, "Russell Brand's a rapist," mic drop.
We can't publish rumor.
[ominous music playing]
It is so hard to expose people.
You need such a level of evidence.
And it's a huge risk
for any news organization
because we know that they get sued.
-[employees chattering]
-[telephones ringing]
But quite early on, I came across somebody
who had a horrific story.
A really bad allegation.
The worst thing that ever happened to her.
The hairs on my arms went up.
I felt I was in this strange limbo
where I knew something
really awful had happened,
but she told me that
she doesn't want to talk on the record.
I really was starting quite blind.
[ominous music continues]
I tend to think of it as a sort of spiral
when you do an investigation like this.
That you don't go to the people
who are really close to him.
They might just
forward the message to him.
So you start with people
who are much more peripheral.
When he was younger.
His ex-girlfriends.
Other comedians.
You build up who their social circle was,
and the worlds they were in.
[unsettling music playing]
[mutters] Oh!
Why you pesky little crumpet, you.
Well, if it lands the right way up
then that means that I'm the winner,
but it can't be wrong,
and it can't be right because we're
Three on the trot.
[music turns dramatic]
What is it supposed to mean?
[man 3] I first met Russell
when I was training as an actor.
[imitating brakes screeching, crashing]
[man 3] I embarked on this theater course.
There was this guy sitting
in the middle of the front row,
sort of like, legs manspread,
taking up a lot of space.
Big, cheesy, Joker-like grin,
and that was Russell.
He was a bit down-and-out,
so I offered him a back room in my house.
Russell!
[dramatic music continues]
Russell?
We did become friends.
We became very close.
Russell's whole shtick was pulling pranks
and playing different characters.
Yeah, let's ring Allen & Overy.
I'll ring him as John Merrick, I think.
[imitating Merrick]
My name is John Merrick.
[woman] Um, can I just
take your number and--
My lucky number is number seven,
but it's not brought me much luck.
I'm very ugly.
Did you want to go out
to the cinema with me?
[woman laughs]
You sound quite beautiful.
-Um-- [laughs]
-You are, I can tell.
[Mark] He was unemployed.
He had just left drama college
and was adamant about
not wanting to find ordinary work,
but he needed to pay the rent.
[female narrator on video]
We have students from all countries,
of all ages.
Our teachers
are both dynamic and friendly.
[Mark] So he got a job in this little
foreign language school on Oxford Street.
-Nothing special.
-[music fades]
[woman 6] On that time, he was my teacher.
[pensive music playing]
He was nice and sweet.
I remember every Friday,
we used to go to a pub.
He was different from other teachers.
Very, very clever, and I thought,
"Mmm, very handsome boy."
I asked him,
"Come to the toilet for kisses with me."
His eyes was open like,
"What happened here? Who is this lady?"
I fancy him so much.
Slowly, slowly,
we fell in love.
It was my my first love.
I was so nervous.
My butterflies in my heart.
[music turns tender]
Always holding hands.
He I love his cuddles.
We did everything together.
We went to Paris, to Bali.
Kisses in different places.
He used to write for me poetry.
We don't really want to lose one more day.
We talk about we will have a big house
and a big family.
We would talk about our future.
[Russell muttering indistinctly]
[Amanda] He was preparing
to be a comedian.
A system of sounds
That would make language perfunctory
[Amanda] I used to
want to have a good job,
but he want to be famous,
to have an amazing career.
[Russell] I'm so very tired
of this script.
-I never want to see it again.
-[music fades]
[Amanda] He was very, very nervous.
He was practicing
and practicing many hours.
Practice different sentences.
[man 1] The brilliant Mr. Russell Brand.
[audience applauding]
[Russell] Um, I thought I'd try my hand
at stand-up comedy
because the world
[audience laughing]
the world of professional boxing
can be quite cruel.
[audience laughs]
[Russell] Don't laugh out of sympathy.
[ominous music playing]
Actually, if you could,
laugh out of sympathy.
[audience laughs]
[Mark] Back in 2000,
we had to create a showreel
for this audition for MTV.
Finsbury Park, I used to live here
[Mark] I borrowed the camera.
We went to film one of his gigs.
I can see one or two of you are bored now.
So I'll distribute some pornography.
There you go, sir.
These guys need porn! Get some more porn!
[Mark] He wanted to be a celebrity
And I want those back.
to be considered a shocking,
controversial performer.
Perfect for MTV.
This is a specimen bottle. Smell that.
[audience laughs]
[man 1] Russell Brand,
ladies and gentlemen.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Mark] He got the job. It was a big break.
You know, this is Russell,
gonna be the face on television.
This is DFC for your MTV. We're in Ibiza
[Mark] MTV's thinking, "We've signed him,
what are we gonna do with him?"
Let's stick him in a club.
-Hello, what's your name?
-Cathy.
-I'm French.
-You're French.
During the Second World War,
did you collaborate with the Nazis?
Nothing worse than a straight person
in a club. You look like some stuffy--
Put Russell in, off his tits.
If you had to describe it
using a brand of potatoes,
like King Edward
or evil dark cancer potatoes,
what kind of potato would you use?
No potato. [laughs]
Russell can be spontaneous
if he wants to be.
He's got total freedom and total liberty.
He's in a playground.
Oh no, Ella. I'll pass you back over.
All right, I love you too. All right.
All right, bye then.
That was the Metropolitan Police Force.
Apparently, I'm wanted
for a series of terrible crimes.
Who'd have thought that?
Eats wood chips quietly.
Eats wood chips quietly.
[music fades]
[Amanda] When I met him,
his lifestyle was normal.
He used to take drugs like a recreation.
Smoking joints.
But he always is looking
for something more.
[ominous music playing]
He was taking a lot of drugs.
Cocaine and heroin.
Okay, so I'm failing to win,
and I'm winning to fail.
I'm willing to win,
and I'm failing to win.
[Amanda] His mood changed so much.
[Russell] Success is so universally
and ubiquitously desired.
It becomes like an anodyne
[voice distorts]
I'd sooner see a phoenix descend
into a grave of ashes
than see one ascend into the heavens
with wings of flame
[Amanda] Everything he do,
he do in extreme.
If he likes something, he will,
he will be focusing on that so, so much.
Do you find me more or less attractive
than an angry wasp
plucking at your eyelashing--
eyelashes, eyelashes,
and spitting venom into them?
-I suppose I find you more attractive.
-More attractive than an angry wasp.
[ominous music continues]
[Mark] Well, Russell got sacked from MTV
because he decided
to dress up as Osama Bin Laden
the day after 9/11 occurred.
But he managed to blagger a show
with UK Play.
Hey, all right there, I'm Russell.
Um, this week's episode, we're looking at
relationships between fathers and sons,
masculinity and all the things
that that entails.
I do remember the episode with his dad.
It was much more of a personal thing.
I've decided to challenge my dad
to a bit of a fight.
So, uh, you know,
I'll fight him right up nice,
give him the battering of his life.
[Amanda] One thing in common we have,
Russell and I,
is that we don't really
get on with our fathers.
I don't think you've ever
given a fuck about me.
'Cause, ultimately, when I was a baby,
when I couldn't defend myself,
couldn't do nothing, you left.
You were more important.
It was more important to pursue
your ambition than to look after me.
[Amanda] Russell's dad,
I met him a few times.
I don't really like him.
His father was looking
at me in a different too much.
He was staring on me.
He was more aggressive, dark.
I-I-I don't really like him.
[unsettling, pensive music playing]
Russell finally had the chance
to settle it once and for all,
and he thought
it was a good idea to put this on camera.
[crowd yelling indistinctly]
[bell rings]
I do feel a bit better about myself.
I feel like I've resolved a few things.
I feel like it had some value.
I feel like, you know,
I should be stronger mentally.
The problems that I have in my mind
are in my head.
They're not in my family.
They're in my head.
[unsettling, pensive music continues]
The thing that struck me really early on
looking into this,
I went through his books.
You know, him and his own words.
When he was younger,
his father takes him to Thailand.
[Mark] I remember him saying on a TV show
that his father picked up two prostitutes.
One for him and one for Russell.
Basically got down to it together
in the same room.
-I mean, yeah, that's his dad.
-[music fades]
-[Russell] You remember that first night?
-Yeah.
And then you had that other one.
And I had that lovely young Filipino one.
You fell in love every time.
[laughs] Yeah. And I remember
sort of sat down on the bed with her.
She goes, "Russell, I have to leave
before I fall in love with you."
And then from the other bed goes,
"Oh, bleeding hell! Oh!"
"I'm going to be sick!" [laughing]
[Rosamund] I think male role models
generally are incredibly important.
And, you know, if you've got your dad,
you know, having sex
in the same room as you,
clearly, that is not
a normal father-son relationship.
That's your first male role model
right there.
Inevitably, that will affect
how you behave towards women.
[pensive music playing]
[Mark] Russell's got this whirlwind energy
every time you switch on that camera.
[Russell yelling]
[Mark] As soon as he sees the light on,
he's bouncing off the walls.
Those natural skills
is something that anybody, I think,
would be attracted to in thinking,
"That's exactly what we need
to front a show
where anything can happen."
Lads! Have a mouthful of this porridge!
I hope you like it salty!
[Big Brother theme song playing]
[Mark] Big Brother,
in the early noughties,
was a massive cultural zeitgeist
and, with his new look,
launched Russell's career
into the stratosphere.
[Nish] It genuinely felt like
one day you woke up
and he was immediately everywhere.
He just skyrocketed
because he was so ready to be a superstar.
[male announcer]
Now, for your host, Mr. Russell Brand!
Please welcome Russell Brand!
It's Russell Brand!
Please welcome Russell Brand,
ladies and gentlemen.
[woman 1] When he exploded
onto the scene, you're like,
"What an incredible creature!"
Like, eloquent and poetic and eccentric.
I think I look like a Dickensian gent,
or perhaps an S&M Willy Wonka.
-[laughs]
-[audience laughing]
The Golden Ticket! Hey!
Why stop at golden tickets, Jonathan,
when we live in a world with showers?
-[laughs nervously]
-[audience laughing]
[unsettling music playing]
He was honest about his past
and the shadows
that followed him, of addiction.
He became something
that we sort of celebrated and enjoyed.
[crowd clamoring]
[Harriet] I think he was smart
about his career
because he just fit perfectly
with the time.
Oh! You look ever so nice,
the pair of you.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
Why don't you kiss each other?
Oh, come on! That was a joke!
-I was ready! I was ready.
-What kind of show is this?
Well, we did. We do kiss in private,
but not for you.
When I think of the noughties,
I think heightened, erotic, sexual energy.
Do you like a big build-up?
I love it, especially from women like you.
To start slowly and then work our way up.
Yeah, you can
I think of just having a really good time.
It was fun.
[brass fanfare playing]
Promiscuity and non-commitment
was celebratory and joyful.
[party-goers cheering and whistling]
[woman on TV]
A new word entered the English language.
A new kind of woman.
The ladette.
[belches]
-[brass fanfare continues]
-[laughing]
She's louder than the lads. [laughs]
She's ruder than the lads
as well. [laughs]
Take that one!
[brass fanfare continues]
Ladette culture was
you could keep up with the boys,
that you could drink as much as them,
that you could have sex
without repercussions.
It was a strange time to grow up
because we were told,
"Oh, you can be just like the boys."
But if you did that,
you were then treated
very differently by society.
[fanfare stops]
-[woman] Russell! I love you, Russell.
-We got a kiss?
[woman laughs]
[Amanda] Fame provides Russell
with too many temptations.
[ominous music playing]
He had a lot of attraction.
I saw many girls around him.
It was like birds.
[women giggling and exclaiming]
[ominous music continues]
I can't face that way
because it's ruining my hair.
I will conduct all my business
over my shoulder.
[Amanda] And he enjoyed it.
The girls used to give him a phone number
on his hand next to me, and I was shocked.
I'd say, "What happened here?"
I try myself so, so much,
and I love him so much,
so much, you cannot imagine.
-[Russell] Come here, gorgeous!
-[woman 1 yelps, speaks indistinctly]
[woman 2] It's Russell Brand! Hello!
But too many girls
around him all the time.
-[Russell] Don't be shy! Mwah!
-[women laughing]
[woman 3] Don't tempt me, love.
I shall, I shall.
You're made of flesh.
[Amanda] And we couldn't have
intimacy together anymore.
And at the end, eh,
he admitted that he had a sex addiction.
I used to be in love of, of a-a guy
that now is totally different.
I felt that something dark he had inside.
And I left forever.
-[women giggling and exclaiming]
-[ominous music continues]
[woman 7] I was such a wild child.
[music fades]
What I found liberating was that
if I call myself a slut before you do,
then I'm the one in control.
I was extremely promiscuous,
and it was so much fun.
-[ethereal music playing]
-[paparazzi clamoring]
I remember thinking,
"Oh my God, he's so fit."
I liked guys who wore eyeliner.
[laughs]
The big hair.
The tabloid energy and his energy
were just a perfect match.
[dramatic tones play]
[ethereal music resumes]
He was surrounding himself
with exciting women.
Amy Winehouse.
Kate Moss.
And he was a hero.
I knew that this girl
that I knew had his number,
and I begged and begged and begged her.
Ugh. And I sent him a text.
I think it was something
along the lines of,
"Hi, Russell, I'm so-and-so's friend.
Do you want to meet for sex?"
Before I knew it, I was out in Camden.
I get a text back, and I'm like,
[gasps] "Oh my God! He's texted me back!"
He's like, "You wanna come round?"
I'm like, "Fuck, yes!"
I think it's Christmas.
[music turns poignant]
I get in a cab,
and he answered the door in his pants.
And then I just went in,
and it was very, you know, matter-of-fact.
This is what we're doing.
And then that happened again and again.
I suppose I was hoping for him to,
like, fall in love with me.
Good morning. Hare Krishna.
[Georgina] But I wasn't deluded
in any way.
I knew that I definitely
wasn't the only girl he was seeing.
Hare Krishna.
[Georgina] We were on a conveyor belt.
Being swiftly replaced
with the next girl an hour later.
She was walking up the drive,
and he said, "Stay. You'll like her."
And I was like, "I think I'd better go."
-[music fades slowly]
-[audience laughs]
It's an unwritten rule that I do pledge
at least an orgasm per person.
So, I think we should lift the lights
and see what I've got myself into.
[audience laughing and whooping]
I may now move among you.
[women cheer]
Every show Russell does,
he makes it clear to the audience that,
"One of the reasons I'm doing this
is so I can meet women,
and you can come backstage afterwards."
I want to get down a gully.
Come down this gully.
Right, fucking A.
You don't have to ask me twice.
[audience laughs]
You want me down your gully?
Down your gully is
where I shall bloody well end up.
[audience laughs]
[Russell] Thanks.
[Nish] It does seem like
he got his material from his real life.
When you look back at that material,
he was sort of bragging
about the things that he was doing.
Um
Which is obviously
quite, sort of, bleak now.
Before you kiss someone or have it off,
you've gone through
well, admittedly, in my case now,
rather stunted rituals.
"You're Russell Brand!" "Yes, I am."
"Can I have a photo?" "Yes."
"Let's go to this toilet."
[audience laughs]
[grunting] "Fuck me, yeah!"
[grunting]
"Fuck me!"
Mmm! [spits]
-[grunting]
-[audience laughing]
"Fuck me! Fuck me!"
-[grunting]
-[ominous music playing]
I really wish that
we'd all taken him at his word.
I can pretend to be nice for a little bit
at the beginning of a relationship.
"I'm quite nice.
I nod a lot. I'm quite ni--"
"Yeah, come round my house.
We'll just watch a video."
"I'll sleep on the sofa."
[laughing]
[Nish] It definitely felt like
nothing was off limits.
Yeah, I was just talking to you 'cause
yeah, for sex.
I'm sorry, I've got
I think if you tried
to complain about anything,
then you were told you just needed to have
a sense of humor, and it was a joke.
"Oh, you're a party pooper."
"Nobody's sexist anymore.
What's the big problem?"
"You just don't get it."
-[Russell speaking indistinctly]
-[ominous music continues]
[Mark] I'd have an invite
to go meet Russell backstage,
and there was literally a queue.
You see girls so blown away
by stardom, fame,
sparkling lights in front of their eyes,
kind of mesmerized by this guy.
[women clamoring]
[Mark] From Russell's point of view,
you know, it was like Shangri-La.
[Rosamund] Lots of women wanted
to have sex with Russell Brand.
Russell Brand would say this himself.
He had a huge amount of sex
in the noughties.
And of course, he was winning prizes
for "Shagger of the Year."
-Um, three times in a row, I think.
-[music fades]
But yeah, they celebrated him for it,
they cheered him for it.
-That's what I've realized now.
-[crowd laughs]
Is that a lot of this book
makes me look bad.
-[crowd laughs]
-What?
-[woman] You get locked out.
-When I got locked out of my apartment.
That leads to me
spitting in a prostitute's face.
He admits to spitting in a woman's face,
in his own book.
"I had sex with her." "Oh, really?"
"Yeah! And by sex, I mean bumming."
"Oh, yeah?" "Yeah! Right up the old bum."
Now, if that's not
the best bit of literature
[crowd laughs]
then I shall sign every damn book,
and I shall f
every last one of you people.
[Rosamund] His book,
loads of people had read it,
and yet when I looked at the reviews,
they weren't being critical of him.
[Russell] Thank you very much.
I get off on it, man. I gotta tell you.
I like it. Is that a crime?
-Does that make me a bad person?
-[yelps, giggles]
And there's other behavior in there
which is so questionable,
from quite an early age,
in terms of
how he treats women around him.
I was following the leads,
and the leads tended to be
people who had bad experiences.
And one of the complications
is that some people had experiences
that didn't cross the criminal bar.
That doesn't mean they're not reportable,
but it does make it more complicated
because you think,
"Is there a clear public interest
in including this?"
-[man 1] Right here, please.
-[man 2] Mr. Brand.
[man 3] To your left.
[Rosamund] The fundamental thing here
was you had somebody who said,
"I'm this playboy. It's all great."
"Everyone's enjoying the sex
they have with me. It's all wonderful."
But actually there was
this really darker side to it.
-[rain pattering]
-[ominous music playing]
[Mark] I remember one time,
Russell comes home,
and he's brought a girl,
and he's got her into his bedroom,
and it was getting
really calamitous in the room,
you're hearing loads of noise,
and you can hear the girl shouting,
-"Let go of me."
-[ominous music continues]
I'm thinking,
"This has gone on long enough."
And so I open up my door,
and I see Russell holding onto the girl
with both of his hands,
gripping hold of her arm
trying to pull her back in
like a tug of war,
and she's wrestling herself away from him,
and then as I switch the light on,
the light comes on, and he lets go.
And then she said, "Listen,
you saw what happened, didn't you?"
And I said,
"Well, if you want to report it,
feel free, and I will support you."
Whether she reported it, I don't know.
[ominous music continues]
[man] Morning, Russell.
[Russell on radio]
This is The Russell Brand Show.
Now, we used to be on BBC 6 Music.
We've been, I suppose, you know,
let's call it promoted to Radio 2.
I suppose we have a brief
to bring enlightenment and joy.
You don't muck about, do you?
Jesus. You know what I mean?
[Georgina] When Russell got his job
at BBC Radio 2,
I was very happy for him
because I knew that,
you know, that's what he wanted.
[cameras clicking]
The BBC wanted to appear a bit hip.
Having Russell as a host would be
their way to target younger viewers.
[Russell] David Walliams is on the line.
You all right, David?
[David] Good evening, Russell Brand.
[suspenseful music playing]
The radio show was very boys' club laddie.
It's like, "What's Russell gonna say now?"
"What will he say
that will be outrageous?"
[Russell] Perhaps we should
build our friendship more,
spend more time together.
[David] Well, I'd like that,
but unfortunately,
every time I've ever made it
to a social occasion with you,
you always said, "Sorry, I can't come."
"I'm about to be tossed off in the toilet
by some fan."
[Russell] That's obviously a euphemism
that David's using there.
[Fawlty Towers theme song playing]
[Georgina] I went to his house,
and we were watching telly.
Fawlty Towers came on the TV.
The most beloved sitcom
of British culture.
And just out of nowhere,
I blurted out, "Oh, it's Grandad!"
[suspenseful music continues]
Get a clean one.
[Georgina] My Grandad
was a fantastic character actor,
and he's like, "Which? John Cleese?"
I'm like, "No, no. Uh, Manuel."
-[fire alarm blaring]
-Fire! Fire! Fire!
No, no!
-Yes! S, s.
-Look, will you get back in there?
Yes! No!
Bam! Changed everything.
[suspenseful music continues]
My phone starts blowing up in my hand,
and I get bombarded by press.
Russell left a voicemail on my mobile.
He said, "I've just done
something really naughty."
"My friend Jonathan's here,
and we think you should break into
your grandparents' house
and destroy their answering machine."
I'm like, "What?"
[Russell on radio] Oh no!
This is Andrew Sachs' answer phone.
-This is unconventional.
-[Jonathan] I'll blurt something out.
[Russell] Don't blurt something out.
Not on the answer phone.
[Andrew] I can't answer at the moment.
Please call again or leave a message.
-Speak after the tone, thank you.
-[answering machine beeps]
Hello, Andrew, this is Russell Brand.
-I'm with Jonathan Ross.
-[Jonathan] Hello.
[Russell] Now, Man Andrew Sachs.
-[Jonathan] Don't call him Manuel.
-I called him Andrew Sachs!
-[Jonathan] No, I apologize.
-I said Andrew Sachs!
[Jonathan] He's an idiot.
Look, Andrew Sachs, I've got respect
for you and your lineage and progeny.
-Never let that be questioned.
-[Jonathan] Don't hint.
[Russell] I wasn't hinting!
Why did that come across as a hint?
[Jonathan] Because you know
what you're talking about.
-He fucked your granddaughter!
-[laughing hysterically]
-Code red!
-[dramatic music playing]
It snowballed from there.
The BBC has apologized
after two of its best-known presenters,
Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand
left offensive messages
on the actor Andrew Sachs' answerphone.
[woman on TV]
This row has been snowballing.
Both Mr. Ross and Mr. Brand
do have to make an apology.
This was inappropriate
and unacceptable behavior.
[Russell] I now acknowledge it was
a really, really stupid thing to do.
-[woman] Have you apologized to Georgina?
-[dramatic music continues]
I've not had a chance
to apologize to Georgina yet
because I'm a little bit embarrassed
and thought I might make it worse.
I really felt like
I was the most hated person in Britain.
And I just couldn't understand
why do these adults, these grown-ups,
why do they all hate me?
They cast me in a role
of press whore slut.
I was made into a villain.
Good evening. Two of the BBC's
biggest stars are off the air tonight.
Russell Brand has resigned,
and Jonathan Ross has been suspended
[Georgina] Jonathan Ross
got suspended for six weeks.
Quick slap on the wrist and back to work.
-[paparazzi clamoring]
-[Georgina] Russell
Oh, Russell did it again! How naughty.
I was just trying to put the bits
of my life back together,
and I see this massive billboard,
and it's Russell's face, and it says,
"Scandalous."
[Russell] Thank you!
Thank you for coming to see me in a medium
in which I am still allowed to flourish
[audience cheering]
after what I've done.
[audience cheering and whistling]
You beautiful bastards.
[audience laughs]
[Georgina] Oh my God.
He's using what happened to me
and my family as material.
Like, how fucking dare you?
Hey!
Hey.
The thing that troubles me most
about that scandal is this.
I do worse things than that every day.
-[audience laughing and applauding]
-[ominous music playing]
I'm loose.
Hello?
I felt profoundly that over and over again
he had told us exactly who he was.
Oh, Jesus!
He threw a bra.
It was sort of a bit sexually exciting
and a little bit frightening.
-As all sexual interaction ought to be.
-[audience laughing]
[Rosamund] I couldn't believe
how much he was admitting to.
It's quite a clever way of hiding.
You tell people this stuff,
so you've normalized it.
So the rest of the stuff maybe gets lost
because you already admitted to so much.
Oh my God, people are showing their boobs.
For heaven's sake,
you about know my reputation. Now
[Rosamund] Some stories,
you start asking questions,
and then a huge bunch of people
are desperate to talk to you.
That really, really wasn't the case here.
The particular difficulty here
is your sources are victims
of something often very terrible.
[pensive music playing]
I'd find a new person.
She'd tell me a terrible thing,
and they wouldn't want to take it forward,
which I completely understand.
People are scared
of the power of celebrity.
People were afraid
of their name being put out there.
That his lawyers would come after them.
They were worried about his fan base.
What people would say about him online.
And people didn't think
they'd be believed as well.
It could be completely
the wrong time in somebody's life.
[pensive music continues]
Or very often, people,
in some cases, haven't told anyone.
[woman 8] I was 26.
I'd just split up with my husband.
Probably wouldn't have admitted it
at the time,
but quite a vulnerable place.
I'd given up on love,
and Russell texted me.
I thought he was funny.
I wanted to hang out with him.
He asked me to stay in his apartment,
and I was like, "Why not?"
A bit of fun.
[music turns ominous]
When he first went to LA,
very early on
when we were in a relationship,
he texted me saying,
"I'm gonna be a millionaire,"
something like that,
because he was getting his first film.
[man 1] This is the argument.
You want to go horseback riding,
and she wants
to sit in the room and hang out.
[Jordan] The role in this particular movie
was the character version of himself
that everyone expected him to be.
I'll do something that'll surprise you.
Tell me what it makes you think of.
-[imitates horse]
-[men laugh]
-What does that make you think of?
-[woman] I don't want to do that.
-I don't want you to do it.
-[woman] I don't wanna--
I don't want you to. It'd be unsettling.
I don't know what orifice you'd use
[Jordan] Russell appealed to America.
Look, he's the British rock star,
"sex god."
-Open your mind real wide.
-You'd rather ride a horse than have sex?
Well, let's combine the two.
I'm an adventurous man. Sex on horseback.
-[man 1] That was fantastic.
-[man 2] That was fantastic.
[Jordan] He got the part.
Most of the filming
was going to be happening in Hawaii.
[tense, pensive music playing]
And he asked me to go with him.
He did say that he took me along
because he wanted someone there
to stop him from trying it on
with people on set.
But that's kind of not how it played out.
[music turns ominous]
-[music fades]
-[waves crashing]
In Hawaii,
he didn't feel comfortable with me
sunbathing on the beach
or even outside the bungalow.
He would say things like,
"Oh, you're dressing like
an attention-seeking tart."
He said, "Oh, from now on,
just wear black."
I remember
he accused me of flirting
with one of the crew members,
and I was like,
"Who are you I can't believe
you're accusing me of this
because I've only spoken to him
on a couple of occasions,
and his wife's been there."
And he was like, "Oh, no."
And he said, "I just said it because
I wanted to see how you would react."
[unsettling music playing]
It just felt like I was
in a constant state of confusion.
His energy was so big
that it kind of just made you
smaller every time.
He had a yoga session,
and he had sex with the yoga teacher.
And he told me.
He was like, "Yeah." So I'm like,
"What am I doing?"
He said to me, "I should be dating
somebody more famous than you."
He was reinforcing sex with strangers
doesn't mean anything.
They're objects.
He wanted me to taste anonymous.
He didn't want me to be familiar to him.
And so he was asking me to brush my teeth,
but it just was never enough.
And so he's standing over me,
and I'm brushing and brushing,
and then I'm seeing my teeth bleeding.
And the association with
I need to stop. [sobs] I'm sorry.
[unsettling music continues]
It got more intense.
He told me that
he just wanted me there all the time.
We were in a hotel in the UK,
and I'd been on my phone
outside of the room
to the person I'd been close to
before seeing Russell.
He had a bag of mine,
and I just was trying
to arrange to pick that bag up.
And when we went back into the room,
Russell was just standing there.
He asked me who I was on the phone to.
I told him, "I need to get my bag back."
And so he snatched my phone out of my hand
and broke it apart into pieces.
[ominous music playing]
So I kind of snatched the phone back
and went into, like, a separate room.
I just was standing there
to have a moment to try and figure out,
"Okay, what's going on?"
You know, "What are you doing, Jordan?"
And he walked in. Um
He didn't say anything.
He put his hand down
the front of my jeans
[exhales softly]
Sorry.
[music turns unsettling]
And he inserted a finger
and then walked away.
[unsettling music continues]
I didn't report it in any way.
I didn't share it with anybody.
I sat with it quietly.
Um
[music fades]
[exhales shakily]
I look at myself back then,
and I feel sorry for myself. [sniffles]
And not in a bad or pitying way,
I just feel like [sobs]
it wasn't very fair, you know?
[poignant music playing]
[music turns ominous]
[Rosamund] I had some dark nights
of the soul over this.
Like many people who work
on these stories, it'd invade my dreams.
I would have dreams about him.
That's partly because I had sort of
an uneasy conscience about it.
I felt I was in a strange limbo.
A year into the investigation,
COVID happened.
We weren't able to go out and meet people.
That limited my ability to work.
The added complication on a personal level
was I was pregnant.
[music turns pensive]
My investigation was slowing down.
Thank God Charlotte came on board.
[woman 9] I'd worked on investigations,
but this wasn't like anything
that I'd ever worked on before.
[music fades]
Something that really stood out to me
from his book,
was the line, "What kind of man was I,
treating women in this way?"
"If this is what I'm telling you,
can you imagine what's being left out?"
And that was a quote
that was always in the back of my mind.
So I guess we were very much
looking at what was left out.
[crowd chattering indistinctly]
[Charlotte] Journalists who
looked at this previously
focused on his BBC career, comedy.
There had been less focus
on his life in the US.
-[woman] Hi, Russell.
-[man] We're going to your show.
Hello, darling. You all right?
-[woman] How are you?
-I'm in a very, very good mood.
Bedtime stories.
[man] Thank you.
That's kind of how I ended up looking,
in particular, at this part of his life.
On our way to Vegas. Um
It's called,
"What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas."
Um I'm here with my--
This my new best friend, right here.
That's a small token.
You provided the plane,
the tickets, the hotels to the big fight.
I provided the toothpicks, though.
And the whores.
Well, okay, we've not discussed that.
But If all right, I will try to.
I'm not a misogynist.
I'm against that kind of language.
I like to think of them as damsels.
[laughs] Damsels?
-[man 1 yells] Russell!
-[crowd clamoring]
-[man 1] Russell!
-[woman screams]
-[man 2] Russell!
-[women screaming]
[Georgina] He was in Hollywood movies.
It's so hard to break America.
And he did.
-[paparazzi chattering]
-[camera shutters clicking]
That was probably such food for the ego,
you know, like, untouchable now.
[Katy] I mean, I think you're a genius.
You make me look good,
and that's why we're together,
and I picked you.
-Well done.
-[Katy] Thank you.
Thank you for letting us
do an interview with you, darling.
This is stupid!
-[Russell laughs]
-[ominous music playing]
[Russell] Uh-oh! She's burst out!
No!
Katy! These are all our things.
His relationship with Katy Perry
catapulted his fame into new heights
because she's someone
who is, you know, next-level fame.
-[paparazzi clamoring]
-[camera shutters clicking]
[Russell] Katy announced herself
in my life by hurling a bottle at my head.
So, initially, I felt sort of embarrassed.
Then she sort of ambled over,
very sort of laconically and confidently
and a very sort of spellbinding person.
-From there, I became enchanted.
-[ethereal music playing]
[woman 1 on TV]
Word on the showbiz grapevine
is that they're now engaged.
-[Katy screams]
-[man] What's up, Katy?
[woman 2] The couple's reps
confirmed the engagement
picked up by
all the celebrity magazines on Tuesday.
-[woman] Katy! Russell!
-[fans clamoring]
[ethereal music continues]
[man on TV] Comedian Russell Brand
and pop star Katy Perry
have tied the knot during
a traditional Indian wedding ceremony.
Security was tight
outside a tiger reserve in India's north.
The lavish wedding procession
included 21 camels,
elephants, and horses, of course.
[Jordan] All of it just doesn't seem real.
He's doing exactly
what he always wanted to do
and be married to someone famous,
which he always said he would be.
-[woman] You're better than the Beckhams.
-That's a nice thing to say.
All right then, a little bit of life.
With me!
-[man 1] Hey, Russell! One more time.
-[man 2] Katy!
[woman] Katy!
[man 3] You've been dealt
quite a blow by the press.
-Do you think so?
-[man 3] Everyone's positive about you.
I don't know. I mean, I certainly am.
It's been fantastic.
[music turns ominous]
Let's talk about Katy and Russell.
Apparently, they had a major blowout.
What happened here?
-I did watch the Oscars.
-I call him on his bullshit.
"Oh my God, you're so funny.
I can't believe it."
And have a lovely night.
[woman on TV] There were rumors
that their marriage may be on the rocks.
She kind of debunked it
a little while ago,
but now it looks like
that could be the case.
[man 1] Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
[paparazzi clamoring]
[man 2] Wow, Russell's pushing everybody.
You're in a bad mood, huh, bro?
[man on TV] New reports
this morning, Katy Perry,
her 14-month marriage
to Russell Brand is over.
[man 2] Russell, man
[woman on TV] The couple
did not have a prenuptial agreement.
Brand could be entitled to half
of Perry's estimated $45 million worth.
-[paparazzi clamoring]
-[camera shutters clicking]
[Charlotte] There was
quite a famous interview with Vogue
where Katy Perry draws on the end
of her relationship with Russell Brand.
She reveals she hadn't heard from him
since he dumped her by text, she says.
And she referred
to finding out the real truth,
saying it's something that she keeps
in her safe for a rainy day.
[ominous tone playing]
This reinvention from the UK.
So you're not like this all the time?
You don't want to be around
when the laughter stops.
[Conan and audience laugh]
[Charlotte] Hollywood star, Katy Perry,
he occupied so many different spaces,
and, you know,
Russell Brand knew a lot of people.
We had an enormous spreadsheet of names.
We were adding to it all the time
because often you speak to someone,
and they give you some names,
and then it sort of goes on like that.
Among the people I spoke to,
the one that stands out
to me the most is Nadia.
She described
meeting Russell Brand in 2012.
[ominous music playing]
This is where she's describing
the second time she met up
with Russell Brand.
"He pushed me up against a wall,
and I'm like, 'What are you doing?'"
"He's like, 'I have a friend here,
and I want you to come in the bedroom.'"
"I'm like, 'No, that's not happening.'"
"'I don't care. That's not happening.
We're not doing that.'"
"And I tried to get away from him."
"And at this point,
he's grabbing at my underwear,
pulling it to the side,
and I'm telling him to get off of me,
and he won't get off."
"And he has that glazed look
in his eye again, and I can't move,
and I told him, 'Get off! Get off!'"
It's at this point
she alleges he raped her.
She goes on to say that afterwards,
"He blocks the door that I've come into
because he doesn't want me going."
"He's like, 'Are you okay?'
I'm like, 'No, I'm not okay.'"
"'You need to get away from me,'
and he's like, 'Let's calm down.'"
Nadia left his house, and at 3:29 a.m.,
he sends her a text message.
"I'm sorry, that was crazy and selfish.
I hope you can forgive me."
She messaged him,
"Do you know how scary you are
when that glazed look comes over you?"
"When a girl says no, it means no."
"Do I have to go and get myself tested?"
He replies, "I'm very sorry.
You don't need to get tested."
"I will make this up to you somehow
with love and kindness."
There's a gap, and he asks,
"Will you ever forgive me?"
-[woman 1] Hello!
-[woman 2] Russell!
[fans clamoring]
[Charlotte] He had the opportunity
to defend himself against that accusation,
and instead, he responded with an apology.
She told me about being treated
in a rape crisis center.
This was the most serious allegation
that I'd come across, and so with Nadia,
I knew that we would be accusing
Russell Brand of rape.
-[paparazzi clamoring]
-[ominous music playing]
[Rosamund] You just don't find many people
with the level of evidence that Nadia had.
I just thought, legally, this would put us
in an incredibly strong position.
Nadia's allegation was in mid-2012,
and there were rumors
about his behavior in relation to women,
I think circling in Tinseltown
certainly by 2013.
[dramatic music playing]
It seems there were people in America
who were really
starting to question his behavior,
and it's about this point
that he returns to the UK.
[Richard Herring] Russell Brand,
ladies and gentlemen!
-There he is!
-[studio audience cheering]
Is it possible to get
any new information out of you
because you've pretty much
said everything about yourself,
or are there things that you hold back?
Just sort of a bloke from Essex,
from a single-parent family,
that's a pretty comprehensive show-off.
-[Richard] Yeah.
-Oh, and also I raped someone once!
[all laughing]
[ominous tone crescendos, stops]
The comedian Russell Brand
has had a busy year,
mainly because he's been transforming
himself away from being a comedian
to becoming a political agitator.
Don't get me wrong, he's still funny,
but angry funny as opposed to lewd funny.
People are disillusioned
with traditional, conventional politics
that doesn't represent us,
the ordinary people.
No one wants the NHS dismantled.
My mate Lee, who's a fireman in
[Rosamund] He's a calculated person.
He realizes the power
of being a political figure.
I mean, to be fair,
it's quite a clever strategy.
He was getting on the front foot.
What a lot of people
in your line of work misunderstand
is that we don't want pedagogic figures
coming in and didactically shouting at us.
Hello, I'm Russell Brand,
the professional person.
Did you see me on
[Rosamund] You can see it in the videos
he's posting online.
He shakes off his former bad boy,
promiscuous image.
One rule for most people
and another, much better rule,
for the elites that govern us.
Is it true you don't even vote?
Yeah, no, I don't vote.
Well, how do you have any authority
to talk about politics then?
Well, I don't get my authority
from this pre-existing paradigm,
which is quite narrow
and only serves a few people.
I look elsewhere for alternatives
that might be of service to humanity.
[dramatic music playing]
This is The Trews, I'm Russel Brand.
I'm here with George Monbiot.
-Is that right?
-Monbiot.
Monbiot. Don't say that last bit.
George Monbiot. That's more glamorous
[George] I was just
astonished by this guy.
Brand was wild.
Exactly what left-wing politics
was lacking at the time.
People don't feel like they want to engage
with the current political system
because they see
that it doesn't work for them.
They see that it makes no difference,
they see that they're not served.
Of course it doesn't work
if they don't bother to vote.
[Russell] Jeremy, my darling
[George] He threw Jeremy Paxman
in the shade
and was able to talk about revolution,
which, you know, no one else
could really have got away with.
I think that we need
to see punitive measures,
because if there are no penalties
the behavior will happen cyclically,
so people need to go down,
and it's the people that
have got the money that need to go down.
[audience cheers and applauds]
-[Rosamund] It was bizarre.
-[unsettling music playing]
Something had just shifted
from Russell Brand being this joke figure
to suddenly,
he's like the political messiah.
Apart from my admiration of firefighters,
much that Russell probably--
-Pay their pensions then, love.
-[audience applauding]
Excuse the sexist language,
I'm working on that.
[Rosamund] The left in politics
didn't seem to care about
the way he talked about women.
Oh, but he's popular,
so we're going to embrace him.
If ordinary people come together,
we have a genuine chance
[George] When this very charismatic man,
with working-class roots, suddenly goes,
boof, onto the political scene,
that's what gave him a lot of power
at this moment.
We're living in a culture
where the worst aspects
of our nature prevail.
I don't think it's always been like this.
I remember growing up with strong unions,
with strong social care.
It's been lovely speaking to you.
Have a wonderful day.
Have a wonderful night.
Stay with the movement.
[Jordan] Power is a really difficult word.
[ominous music playing]
Every one of us has that,
but it's what we do with it.
Yeah, it was an extraordinary honor.
I can't imagine what I'll do
for my next one. My God, here he is.
I just got your message.
I've always figured out my emotions
by writing things down,
and that's exactly what I did.
[ominous music continues]
I decided to publish it
when I was having a daughter,
and I really did know at that point
the things that I'd been through
were not acceptable,
because I knew that
I wouldn't want that to happen to her.
So Sorry.
I wrote the book
as a therapeutic experience,
what an unhealthy relationship is.
But when you write the book,
you do also want people
to have a response to it, a reaction.
In 2015, I worked in PR,
and I was like, "I know how to reach out
to press, I've worked with media,
and they're going to want
to have these stories,
they're going to want to share it."
But, yeah, it was just like radio silence.
Tonight, for the next 90 minutes,
I give you Russell Edward Brand.
A true superstar.
-All right, mate.
-[audience applauding]
I rapidly realized
I wasn't going to get
any type of response from the press.
The things I was sharing in the book,
it didn't actually
serve the media at that point
because they had a different narrative
they wanted to share about Russell.
The Observer did a profile on you
and asked at the end of the piece,
"What will become of Russell Brand?"
Oh, that gave me an eerie,
haunted-house feeling.
I've had this feeling my whole life
that something dodgy is going to happen,
something bad is going to happen to me.
I'm scum. I'm a scumbag. Scumbag--
I'm subject to failings and flaws.
I've done terrible things in my life.
I've done nasty, nasty things in my life.
Nasty things that I'm ashamed of
and I've got to live with.
[air roars to crescendo, fades]
I was in my late twenties
when I met Russell.
He was a few years younger than me.
I didn't know anything about him.
He wasn't famous at the time.
[poignant, pensive music playing]
I loved how his mind worked.
Hello?
[Emily] I loved the creative side
of his thinking.
Yeah, it's Russell.
Uh, are you busy?
[Emily] He was very romantic.
He was very gentle.
I remember some mornings waking up,
and he would play Burt Bacharach,
and he would wrap his arms around me,
and he would sway from side to side
singing these songs to me.
[indistinct chatter]
[Emily] He was quite vague
about his lifestyle.
He never told me
about any other woman he was dating.
[group laughing]
[Emily] He did, however,
tell me other things about women.
Quite graphic things.
Such as his encounters with prostitutes,
which was really
quite disturbing, actually.
But at the same time, I felt quite safe
knowing he was very gentle with me.
Our relationship had
a different kind of dynamic, more tender.
[music intensifies]
I was just quite happy
to be in his presence.
He definitely had
that magnetic personality
to draw you in and make you feel like
you're the most special person
in the world.
And that's how he made me feel
[clicks tongue]
until he didn't.
[music fades]
[birds singing and chirping]
We had woken up in the morning,
and I understood he wanted to have sex.
I said to him,
"Please, just get a condom."
And he was being all playful,
saying to me
that he wants to feel close to me,
I said to him,
"You can still feel close to me,
but please, you have to use protection."
Especially knowing
his encounters with prostitutes
and all the things he'd gotten up to.
[ominous music playing]
It stopped being playful [sighs]
and then I thought,
"No."
"This guy's actually
getting really serious."
And I said to him, "No, Russell,
please, let's just use protection."
I kept saying no. I kept saying no.
I said, "Stop, Russell, stop.
Please, don't, please."
-I I begged him. I literally begged him.
-[unsettling music playing]
I tried to kick him off.
I tried to draw my knees back
to kick him in his belly,
but he was too strong for me.
And he just
pinned my hands back behind my head,
and he just forced himself into me.
[sobbing]
Sorry.
-[music fades]
-[sniffles]
Whilst it was happening,
all I could think of
were these horrific, graphic stories
about the prostitutes,
and all I could think of was,
"Oh my God, this guy's going
to infect me with something," you know?
[sniffles]
And when it happens, you just feel like
Is this
Is this rape?
Because I'm with this guy, it's
I know I said, "No,"
but you question yourself.
You think
"Did I do something wrong?"
[Emily sniffles, exhales]
And then I just left his
as quickly as I could.
And I remember
I did tell one of my friends.
She was the only person I told.
[birds singing and chirping]
Back then, women felt shamed.
You didn't talk about it.
I just felt completely violated,
and unseen,
and unheard.
I was saying no.
I kept saying no.
-"Stop, please. Stop, stop, no."
-[unsettling music resumes]
[ominous music playing]
[crowd shouting indistinctly]
I decided to share my experience today,
in support of all the other women
that have come forward,
and all women everywhere,
who have been subjected
to any type of sexual harassment
or sexual assault.
Breaking news. Harvey Weinstein
is about to turn himself in
on criminal charges related
to alleged sexual misconduct.
[man] Harvey!
This is something women all
around the world have been waiting for.
[woman] Raise your hand and say, "Me too!"
[crowd] Me too!
[Jordan] The power of that hashtag.
I did have a silent, still moment
where I felt quite emotional
when I saw what it meant.
[chanting] Hey, hey! Ho, ho
People were recognizing that some
of the behaviors that we were okay with
in the noughties,
actually, they're not okay.
-[dark, pensive music playing]
-[audience cheering and applauding]
Hello!
I think after MeToo,
people were really ready to listen
in a way that they couldn't,
or didn't want to, before.
And women in comedy
started to share their stories.
I've done a show with someone who I,
and you, believe is a predator.
It's such a messy thing
because I don't have proof.
What, am I supposed to not feed
my children because someone else
Also, sometimes,
especially in that instance
that you're referencing,
it was about raising it rather than
-I raised it.
-Yeah, exactly.
I called him a predator
to his face, every day.
Well, where's he? Hiding.
-Ooh!
-Hiding.
I wonder if it's too late
to get him on the show.
[laughs]
I've definitely heard things
from multiple people over the years
about Russell Brand,
and I know that people
had tried to expose him for years,
and from what I've heard, lawyers would
stop them.
[music fades]
I've been contacted by people saying,
"Why not say something if you knew?"
But it is much more complicated than that.
When you're dealing with powerful people,
the legal system has loopholes
that can be exploited
if you throw enough money at it.
There's two things that break it.
It's the bravery of the victims
that come forward,
and it's the hard work and diligence
of the journalists that break the story.
[determined music playing]
[Charlotte] I have
a huge amount of respect for Ros,
having started this in 2019.
We were obviously voicing
a lot of similar frustrations and fears,
and we had each other as sounding boards,
but, ultimately, the most important thing
was the women we had spoken to,
doing everything we could to protect them.
It was that
that made me feel sick at times.
What is going to happen when we publish?
I was thinking of worst-case scenarios.
What if their identity is compromised?
What if their mental health is affected?
Russell Brand is an unpredictable figure.
Uh, would he go after them personally?
We just didn't know.
[music turns ominous]
[Rosamund] It's a very
nerve-wracking time.
It's sort of like butterflies,
but in a bad way.
I remember just waking up
at 2:00 a.m. and cleaning.
-[music intensifies]
-[camera shutters clicking]
[Harriet] People were tweeting about it.
It kept seeming like
the truth was going to come out.
You kept hearing of stories
that journalists were trying to get out,
and it would just never happen.
[ominous music continues]
[camera shutters clicking]
-[man] I'm loving the beard, bro.
-[music fades]
[Harriet] Russell Brand stopped doing TV.
I don't know if it was
because the industry knew
about the allegations
and didn't want to work with him,
but it definitely seems very strategic
that he set himself
outside of the mainstream.
People started to say,
"We won't work with this person."
And he kind of disappears
sort of from British TV,
and it's around that point
that he mysteriously
becomes a kind of convert
to conspiracy theories and the far right
of the political spectrum.
[lively theme music plays]
You may be tired of the mainstream.
You may have lost your trust.
You may be sick of big business
and mainstream media
and the state collaborating to keep you
from having power in your own life,
and if that's how you feel,
then I feel the same way you do.
I was a researcher
on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
He's one of the first people that Rumble
have ever given an exclusive contract to.
And that contract was worth millions.
Have you ever wondered how Bill Gates
gets such positive media coverage?
It's because he owns it,
or at least funds large parts of it
[Laura] Rumble was
the perfect platform for him.
At the time, the alt-right
were getting kicked off YouTube.
Since I've been talking,
four children have gone missing.
-Fuck Antifa!
-Fuck Antifa!
[Laura] They were
getting kicked off Twitter.
-It hadn't been bought by Elon Musk yet.
-[dramatic music playing]
So, Rumble was the perfect thing
for that time.
It's a free-speech version of YouTube,
where you can say whatever you like.
There is a global conspiracy
by opioid killers and healthcare giants
to get you sick, keep you sick,
and charge you money.
It was the weirdest setup
I've ever been involved in, in my life.
[gong ringing]
He was obsessed
with meditating, ice baths.
Oh!
[Laura] Conspiracies were
a big thing for him.
All he cared about was the US.
Perhaps he saw how successful
other podcasters have been.
People like Tucker Carlson,
who's huge in the US.
Tucker, thanks for having me.
I was able to
[Laura] It was a deliberate strategy
Give it a thumbs up, subscribe.
Pass it around
[Laura] to continue his career.
Click that notification bell,
so I can ding you right in the mind
every time a thought comes into my head
[George] It's hard to believe
it's the same person.
I find this transition
one of the most troubling things
I've ever come across in my life.
He's now providing a channel
for some really odious far-right people.
Our culture's decaying.
Our free speech is under attack.
People who would destroy
all the things that he once stood for.
A little while ago, I was a vegan
living a simple life in Grays, Essex.
Now I'm eating steak at Mar-a-Lago.
Funny how the world changes.
So Russell Brand is now constantly railing
against "the establishment"
and "the elite."
Thanks for joining me
on this glorious voyage
towards personal and community awakening
against Goliaths, tyrants,
and titans who want to keep you dumb.
And at the same time,
promote these endless,
discredited conspiracy fictions.
Misinformation!
Won't someone give me
some true information?
What about Fauci?
Can he be relied on
on the subject of COVID and the pandemic?
Hm?
He's talking about quite obscure bits of
fringe Republican Party policy in America.
You're like,
"I think he lives in Hertfordshire."
[dramatic music playing]
[Nish] He's a grifter,
he's a shapeshifter.
I think, ultimately, he's a moral vacuum.
[music fades]
[Laura] I heard it through the grapevine
that something was coming
in relation to Russell.
And I think he knew
that his time
was going to be up at some point.
[speaks indistinctly]
[Laura] The reality is that
he's probably been a bit clever about it.
If I go into this area
of conspiracy theory,
that if they did come out,
people were going to say,
"It's a mainstream media plot
to silence him because he's right."
"He's talking the truth finally,
and no one else will talk about it."
[Rosamund] We'd had
this major breakthrough
with Nadia's evidence of rape.
And it felt like
we're in touching distance of the end.
[ominous music playing]
[Charlotte] You kind of think,
"Oh God, like, have we got enough?"
I mean, the corroboration process
was still ongoing.
There were still other people
that we were speaking to.
Um, you know, we did strongly feel that
we wanted to have more voices on board.
A few months later,
I ended up speaking to a woman who says
Russell Brand sexually assaulted her.
She recounted a moment when she says
Russell Brand's eyes kind of went black.
There was no more color in them.
It took me back
to my conversation with Nadia,
where she talked
about his eyes glazing over.
Her story points to, like,
an overall pattern of behavior.
There were parallels with other accounts
and what people had told us.
-[unsettling music playing]
-Yeah.
[Charlotte] The final deadline
wasn't actually the moment we published.
It was the moment that we've decided
we had enough to go for a right of reply.
So, we went to Russell Brand and said,
"This is what we intend to publish.
Do you have any response to this?"
[unsettling music continues]
Once you've sent that, you can't go back.
That was gloves off. This is it now.
And then it all went quiet.
We gave Russell Brand
eight days to respond.
[music turns ominous]
The day before the deadline,
his lawyers got back in touch.
They said, "The publication
was a concerted campaign."
That their client believes, "There is
a deeply concerning agenda to all this."
"Namely, the fact that he is
an alternative media broadcaster
competing with mainstream media."
We gave those lawyers
an opportunity to provide a full response,
um, and they didn't reply.
And then got a message
saying Russell Brand's gone on YouTube.
Hello there, you awakening wonders,
now this isn't the usual type of video
we make on this channel,
where we critique, attack,
and undermine the news
in all its corruption,
because in this story, I am the news.
[continues on screen]
Amidst this litany of astonishing,
rather baroque attacks
are some very serious allegations
that I absolutely refute.
This is an opinion.
He's not refuting anything.
And he didn't provide us with evidence
that what we were saying was not true.
Now during that time of promiscuity,
the relationships I had
were absolutely, always consensual.
I was always transparent about that then.
And to see that transparency metastasized
into something criminal,
that I absolutely deny, makes me question,
"Is there another agenda at play?"
This acts as a right of reply.
He is a canny media operator,
and this is part of that.
He was getting ahead of us publishing.
I'm aware you've been saying
in the comments for a while,
"Watch out, Russell,
they're coming for you."
"You're too close to the truth.
Russell's a conspiracy theorist."
-"Russell Brand's--"
-[stops video]
[dramatic music playing]
Because this video had gone out,
it kind of put this laser focus
on the story.
Things moved quite quickly.
We had everything we needed,
so we decided to publish.
[dramatic music continues]
[man on TV] You're watching BBC News.
Some breaking developments
coming into us at the newsroom.
Russell Brand has been accused of rape.
Multiple women have accused him
of sexual assault.
Four women have come forward
with allegations as part of a
Russell Brand has been accused of rape,
sexual assault, and emotional abuse.
There's been some criticism about,
"Well, uh, the women didn't come forward
until journalists contacted them."
But that's how
the Harvey Weinstein scandal was broken!
And I don't think
that's any reason to rule it out.
I do think his career
is going to have to be on hold for now,
that he's gonna
have to prove his innocence,
and there's gonna be
a lot more investigating.
-[dramatic music continues]
-[paparazzi clamoring]
[woman 2 on TV]
Despite those allegations emerging,
Mr. Brand is tonight appearing on stage
at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre
in North London.
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Russell] You came!
Thank you.
[Charlotte] He was doing
a stand-up tour at the time.
My colleague had been going along,
watching his shows.
There were still references
to sex and women's bodies,
but after we'd gone
for the right of reply,
my colleague noticed
that those references had been omitted.
It was as if someone had decided,
after all these years,
that actually maybe, it wasn't that funny.
-[tense music playing]
-[camera shutters clicking]
[Rosamund] As soon as it's out
in the world, it's overwhelming.
We had a lot of people email us
with fresh allegations.
[music turns dramatic]
[Julie] In the beginning,
there were four sexual offense allegations
against Russell Brand
and no police investigation.
Now Scotland Yard says
they've received a number more.
-[dramatic music continues]
-[paparazzi clamoring]
[Charlie] British actor
and comedian Russell Brand
has been accused of sexual assault
in a lawsuit filed in New York.
A woman claims he assaulted her
when she was an extra during the filming
of Arthur, 13 years ago.
[music fades]
[woman] I was working on the set
of the movie Arthur.
Mr. Brand appeared intoxicated,
smelled of alcohol,
and was carrying a bottle of vodka on set.
He then exposed his penis to me on set
and in full view of the cast and crew.
However, no one disciplined,
supervised, or reprimanded Brand.
The sexual assault
happened later that same day
when I was in the bathroom.
Russell Brand was in the restroom
physically blocking the exit
with his body,
with his pants pulled down
and his erect penis exposed,
and assaulted me
as a member of the production crew
guarded the door from outside.
[Charlotte] In the weeks and months
after we published,
from the perspective of a lot of
the people that we've been speaking to,
the women, they were saying,
"Well, what happens next?"
Obviously, there was
a police investigation,
but we had no way of knowing
what was going to happen at the end of it.
Russell Brand continued
to make his content,
and, you know,
nothing seemed to be happening.
[bells chime]
Obviously, I've been through
a lot of things.
I know you've been through
a lot of things personally too.
But for me, I've reached the point
where the figure,
the personage, the presence of Christ
became overwhelming,
unavoidable, welcome, necessary.
To have gone on the journey from 2015,
positioning himself as a progressive hero,
and where he is today,
being baptized by Bear Grylls
in the Thames,
which, even as I say it as a sentence,
I feel like it's something
that I dreamt after I ate too much cheese.
If each of us bears the image of the Lord,
his hallmark and his signature,
if all of us are within his covenant
and covered by his blood, then the
I would say that if there is a cloud
of sexual assault allegations
hanging around you,
probably the last thing you should do
is tie yourself to organized religion.
-Thank you for the gift that he is.
-[dark, ethereal music playing]
Father, I pray that you would encamp
your angels around him.
[Laura] I really don't buy
that he is a genuine Christian
that goes to church every Sunday.
I think it's to appeal
to that American audience.
They love a good Christian man.
I'm here to love you, I'm here to,
as best as I can in my crazy accent,
tell you that my life
has been irrevocably changed,
revolutionarily changed
[Nish] I think he positioned himself
towards an audience
that maybe don't necessarily
have a problem
with allegations of assault
hanging around a person.
[tweets chirping]
[dark, ethereal music continues]
I would not be surprised
if he's coming out as a preacher soon.
"Do not conform any longer
to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing"
[Rosamund] I find it really difficult
to see Christianity used
in the way that he uses it.
It's Easter,
a time of rebirth,
after death, after annihilation,
after loss, after a journey
[Rosamund] You have to repent.
That's a fundamental part
of trying to be a better person.
And for that, you have to listen
to what other people are saying about you.
People say, "Look,
you only became a Christian
seven months after the allegations
were made public,
and that this is part of your thing."
That you worked out that this
could give you some kind of cover.
-Do you have a denomination or not?
-Why Why?
-I'm just asking.
-No.
-It's not an allegation.
-[laughs]
-I'm just asking.
-I treat everything as an allegation.
In Christ, there is the potential
that you yourself can live
with the odd paradox of your brokenness,
and the failings of your life,
and the mistakes you've made,
and the errors,
but also becoming whole in that.
You were an atheist,
you then became a Buddhist,
now you're a Christian.
-Now what are you gonna be next?
-Well, yes.
-A Muslim? A Jew? A Scientologist?
-That's what some people think.
You are attempting to create,
using a collage of language
-But you're the one who told us.
-[mocking] You told us that!
[Piers] You were!
I'll talk about anything,
but I prefer to talk--
-I know you're an atheist, you told me.
-I prefer to talk about something.
We're talking about
your profound belief in God.
And we're talking about the fact
that you've been water-carrying for Satan.
-Who's Satan?
-The fallenness.
-I've been carrying water for Satan?
-Satan is
[Sarah] Brand's whole shtick now is
to examine, is to inquire,
is to be truthful, is to be authentic.
I am deeply fascinated with truth.
I am fascinated with truth.
We are going to find out the truth,
and we're going to deal with the truth
because, actually,
I am not afraid of the truth
[Sarah] What becomes problematic
is when you introduce
the confession of some women
who have been violated,
and that is not recognized
or engaged with or examined.
Would you close in prayer?
-Oh yeah, all right.
-[audience cheering]
[Sarah] Can you imagine
the ripple effect in the culture
if a man accepted
that there had been a violation
that he feels bad about, that he regrets?
[ominous music playing]
[birds singing and chirping]
[Charlotte] We had no way of knowing
what would happen next.
We didn't know
that there'd be criminal charges.
It could be that no one
even paid attention to any of this.
Does this investigation end here?
[ominous music continues]
Spring of 2025,
Ros came round to visit me.
We were catching up on everything.
Just speculating,
as you do with colleagues,
about what will happen next.
We said goodbye.
Ros hopped on her Lime bike
and cycled away,
and it was, honestly, like,
minutes after she'd cycled away
that news of the charges dropped.
[music intensifies]
I want to bring you some breaking news
that we just had from
the Metropolitan Police here in the UK.
The actor and comedian Russell Brand
has been charged in connection
with the following offenses,
one count of rape,
one count of indecent assault,
one count of oral rape,
two counts of sexual assault.
I'll have police here.
-What I suggest you do is move over there.
-[man] I'm not moving.
Your choice. You won't get shots.
Your better shot's there.
[man] It doesn't matter. I don't need it.
It's been a very long road to here.
At many points, it felt like
we wouldn't get to this point.
It felt like a very significant moment.
[officer 1] Out of the way!
Out of the way!
[officer 2] Go!
[officer 1] Get back! Get back!
-[dramatic music playing]
-[crowd clamoring]
The charges that the police had
actually predate our allegations.
And one of them is as early as 1999,
and of course,
Russell Brand wasn't famous in 1999.
Russell Brand didn't do what he did
because he was called the talent.
My personal belief is Russell Brand
would have done that anyway,
but the problem is
being referred to as the talent
facilitated and enabled it,
and certainly prolonged it
in ways that I think
we should all be very ashamed about.
Comedian Russell Brand is facing
two further charges this evening,
one of rape and one of sexual assault.
The charges relate to alleged offenses
against two women in 2009
and are separate to the charges
to which Brand
pleaded not guilty in April.
[dramatic music continues]
[Rosamund] I think
it's a really important moment
for women, for culture,
and for accountability.
What it means
is that no one's above the law.
What it means is that
women's voices are listened to,
even after many years have passed.
I thought, if these women are brave enough
to come forward, then so should I.
I'm speaking now because I no longer feel
I should have to carry this in silence.
No one should feel afraid because of
something that happened a long time ago.
It doesn't matter. It still happened.
I still said no.
He should have listened to me.
[unsettling music playing]
I believe Russell needs
to take accountability for his actions
and recognize that what he understood,
or experienced as consensual
from my side, was not consent.
I think every woman's voice
should be heard.
The more of us who get together
and stand up for ourselves, the better.
None of us wanna talk, right?
Because we're slut-shamed.
Or called liars.
[music turns poignant]
But I personally need
to draw a line under this.
I don't think it's about me.
This is about me
saying it's okay to speak up,
be brave enough to speak up.
It's very scary,
but the reason I'm doing it is for that.
It's for the people I do know personally
that haven't been able to speak up.
Those people that haven't had justice.
[dramatic music playing]
[music fades]