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Comedian Russell Brand denied “serious criminal allegations” made against him in a video he posted shortly before three British news outlets published an investigation on Saturday in which four women accused him of sexual assault.
The investigation was a collaboration between The Sunday Times and The Times of London newspapers, as well as Channel 4 Dispatches, a television program which aired a documentary on the allegations on Saturday. They reported that the women accused him of sexual assault in a series of incidents between 2006 and 2013.
Mr. Brand, an actor and former television host who has more recently gained a sizable following on his YouTube channel, where he often opines on wellness and interviews prominent conservative figures, released a short video on Friday about social media in which he said he had received notes from media organizations listing “a litany of extremely blatant and aggressive attacks.”
“Amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute,” Mr. Brand said in the video, adding that while he had ever spoken of a “period of promiscuity ” in his life, meetings at that time were “always consensual”.
His literary agency, Tavistock Wood, announced this weekend that it had severed ties with him, saying in a statement that it believed it had been “horribly misled” by him when he denied an allegation in 2020.
The allegations were published while the 48-year-old comedian was on a short stand-up tour. At a show in northwest London on Saturday night, he opened the evening with an indirect reference to the accusations.
“I have a lot to tell you,” he said, according to media reports. “There are obviously some things I absolutely cannot talk about and I appreciate you understanding.”
As part of the investigation, a woman accused Mr. Brand of raping her against a wall in his Los Angeles home in 2012. News agencies said the woman provided medical records confirming she had been treated at a rape crisis center. Another woman accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex on him when she was 16, although she fought him off.
In his video, Mr. Brand did not address the details of the accusations made by the four women, three of whom were not identified in the reports. He said there were “witnesses whose testimony directly contradicted the stories” presented to him by news agencies, but according to the article, Mr. Brand’s lawyer did not respond to a request to provide such evidence, nor a legal representative responds to a request for comment on the specific allegations.
Known for his raunchy, boundary-pushing humor that sometimes got him into trouble, Mr. Brand’s fame grew in Britain in the 2000s with a one-man show about his heroin addiction, then as a radio host on the BBC and Channel 4. He burst into American pop culture with a leading role in the romantic comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in 2008 and in a remake of “Arthur” in 2011, and was briefly married to pop star Katy Perry.
Now, Mr. Brand’s comments on his YouTube channel, which has 6.6 million followers, tend to revolve around health, spirituality, so-called woke culture and free speech, and his guests include Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Tucker Carlson and conservative commentator Candace Owens. In his Friday video, he accuses the “mainstream media” of launching what he calls a “coordinated attack” against him. Elon Musk responded to Mr. Brand’s post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in writing: “Of course. They don’t like competition.
Mr. Brand has spoken and written extensively about battling drug, alcohol and sex addictions, writing in his memoir that he was treated for sex addiction in 2005.
Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London.
