Amid his ongoing legal battles over extensive rape and sexual assault claims, Russell Brand has confessed to having “exploitative,” consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl when he was 30.
The disgraced actor and comedian, best known for his roles on Big Brother’s Big Mouth and in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is currently awaiting trial over allegations from six women, who allege crimes dating from 1999 to 2009. He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, and his June trial was pushed back to this October just last month.
This week, however, on YouTube’s The Megyn Kelly Show, hosted by the prominent right-wing podcaster, the now-50-year-old has admitted to sleeping with a 16-year-old when he was at the height of his fame.
“The plain fact of it is, 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,” said Brand in the Wednesday episode. “But when I was 30, I was a very different person. I was a lot younger, and I was an immature 30-year-old.”
“It is exploitative,” he said about the relationships. “Consensual sex with a lot of people, when there is a strong power differential, as there is when you are a famous man who has the ability to attract women that I had at that time, I think involves exploitation.”
He added: “I recognize that my sexual conduct in the past was selfish. I did not apply enough consideration — barely any, I suppose, really — to how that sex was affecting other people.”
Detectives began investigating in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations, which followed reporting by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times. One of the women told Dispatches that Brand entered a relationship with her when he was 31 and she was 16. Their relationship lasted three months, she had said, and Brand had been “emotionally abusive and controlling.” Another claimed that Brand raped her in 2012 in his L.A. home, according to the Sunday Times.
Those initial claims against him date between 2006 and 2013, when Brand was working on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Kings of Comedy and Big Brother’s Celebrity Hijack.
