Far right political commentator Russell Brand has been charged with rape, indecent assault, oral rape, and sexual assault in his native U.K. According to the Metropolitan Police, who announced the charges Friday, the incidents involved four different women, and took place between 1999 and 2005.
Brand is due at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday, May 2. His attorney did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
The investigation against Brand began in September 2023, after police received “a number of allegations” following reporting by documentary television program Dispatches and The Sunday Times, police said in a press release. The outlets teamed up for an expose on Brand in 2023, airing his accusers’ accounts of nonconsensual sexual encounters. One of the women was 16 (the age of consent in England) at the time of the alleged incident.
Brand denied the claims in a video he posted to social media on September 15, 2023.
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“The relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual,” he said, while describing his behavior during the time in question as “very, very promiscuous.”
“I was always transparent about that then—almost too transparent,” he continued. “And I’m being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal, that I absolutely deny.”
Following the 2023 reports, Brand was dropped by his management, who said that they were “horribly misled by him” when he had denied wrongdoing. One of the accusers told the Times that in 2020 she had approached Angharad Wood, Brand’s former agent, and told him about her nonconsensual experiences with the comedian. Tavistock Wood, the agency, told Deadline in a statement that Brand had “categorically and vehemently denied the allegation made in 2020.”
Vanity Fair has reached out to Tavistock Wood for comment.
The same day that the 2023 report was published, Brand took the stage for a scheduled stand-up comedy set in Wembley. He was greeted with a standing ovation.
Brand was married to singer Katy Perry for 14 months from 2010 to 2011, informing her in a moment captured in her 2012 documentary Part of Me by text message on New Year’s Eve that he was filing for divorce, immediately before she took the stage for a scheduled performance. In a 2013 interview with Vogue, she said that that was the last time they’d been in contact. It was after this that Brand pivoted from his Hollywood career to right-leaning political commentary, wellness, and religion.
In April 2024, he was baptized in the River Thames and said he immediately felt “changed, a sort of transformation.” The sacrament appeared to be overseen by TV survivalist Bear Grylls, shown in an Instagram photo that Brand captioned, “Me, Bear Grylls, The River Thames and of course, The Holy Spirit.” In February 2025, Jesus People Movement’s Sean Feucht announced that he and Brand were planning a “mass baptism revival event in Florida in May.”
Brand publicly supported Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and celebrated on social media when he won. In February, he was among a crowd of celebrities reportedly invited to a President’s Day celebration at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. On social media, he also courts controversy, like when he recently invited Kanye West to join him for a recorded conversation.
“Let’s suit up and chat!” he wrote. “You wear your KKK robes I’ll wear white KKK ones and we’ll bring about Ku Klux Harmony.”
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