Comedian Russell Brand admitted sleeping with a girl barely half his age in a sit-down with the right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly.
The 50-year-old born-again Christian is set to stand trial for rape and sexual assault in October on seven charges relating to incidents involving seven different women that took place between 1999 and 2009. He has denied all charges.
Once a left-wing comic, Brand has since reinvented himself as a darling of the Right in the U.S., attending the Republican National Convention in 2024, hanging out with RFK Jr., and being awarded a ‘Global Defender of Freedom’ award at Mar-a-Lago.
Speaking to Kelly on Wednesday to promote a new book, Brand addressed allegations that he slept with a 16-year-old when he was 30.
After thanking Kelly for giving him the “grace to address” her anger, Brand went on to confirm that he had, in fact, slept with the 16-year-old, telling her, “The plain fact of it is that in Europe and in the United Kingdom, where I’m from, the age of consent is 16, and I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30.”
He continued, “But when I was 30, I was a very different person. I was a lot younger, and I was an immature 30-year-old.”
The woman’s decision to speak to the Sunday Times in 2023 prompted calls for age-of-consent laws in the U.K. to be reassessed. In addition, the BBC promised to investigate whether Brand had used its taxis to transport the 16-year-old around London.
Brand went on to acknowledge that the encounter was inherently exploitative in nature, telling Kelly, “Consensual sex, actually, with a variety of people when there is a strong power differential, because there is when you’re a famous man that has the ability to attract women that I had at that time, I think involves exploitation. I think it is exploitative.”
“I recognize that my sexual conduct in the past was selfish and I did not apply enough consideration, barely any, I suppose, really, to how that sex was affecting other people,” he added.
Kelly also asked Brand about the accusations leveled against his ex-wife, pop star Katy Perry, by Australian actor Ruby Rose. Rose, 40, alleged that Perry, 41, sexually assaulted her in a nightclub in Melbourne.
Perry has denied the accusations, with her representative telling Variety in a statement, “The allegations being circulated on social media by Ruby Rose about Katy Perry are not only categorically false, they are dangerous reckless lies. Ms. Rose has a well-documented history of making serious public allegations on social media against various individuals, claims that have repeatedly been denied by those named.”
After acknowledging that he is no longer in contact with Perry but does continue to speak to her parents, Keith and Mary, whom he described as “good Christian folks,” Brand commented on Rose’s allegations, telling Kelly that he couldn’t see where a crime had been committed.
“This is probably the old school man in me,” Brand said, “I don’t even hear the crime there.”
“What happened? I can’t even hear where it is. Someone would have to poke me with a stick,” he continued, pretending to poke Kelly with a stick and adding, “There, that’s the bit that was a crime!”
While he was initially facing charges on five counts of rape, sexual assault and indecent exposure relating to incidents involving four separate women that took place between 1999 and 2005, in December the star was charged with an additional count of rape and sexual assault for incidents involving two more women that took place in 2009.
His trial, initially set to start in June, has been delayed until October. Brand has denied all charges and any wrongdoing.
Brand, who has long claimed to suffer from a sex addiction, has also been accused of sexual harassment by other stars, with Australian singer Dannii Minogue calling him “a bit of a vile predator” following an incident on his television show in 2006.
“I certainly don’t think he has cured his sex addiction,” she added.
Brand was a regular feature on the British comedy circuit and appeared in several Hollywood movies, including Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That chapter of his career began to crumble in 2008 when he and fellow BBC radio host Jonathan Ross prank-called actor Andrew Sachs, who starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers.
Ross and Brand alluded to Brand having had sex with Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Baillie. Brand resigned days later, apologizing to “beloved and brilliant comic actor” Sachs.
Throughout his career, Brand had several run-ins with the law, including drug-related arrests.
He would later become the subject of a joint investigation by several prominent U.K. media outlets, which published allegations from four women who accused him of sexual assaults and emotional abuse.
In 2023, as the pressure of the allegations rose, a tour he was conducting was suspended partway through, and he dropped his agent, who later said they feared they had been misled by him.
His Christian rhetoric ramped up in 2023 as he abandoned his anti-establishment sensibilities and found a new home in Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
