It’s only been a couple of days since Russell Brand was accused of multiple instances of rape, sexual assault, and grooming that allegedly occurred during the height of his fame. But already, a slew of newly resurfaced comments and stories about the comedian are indicating that people have tried to blow the whistle on him for years.
In 2006, Dannii Minogue, the younger sister of pop star Kylie, called Brand “completely crazy and a bit of a vile predator” while recounting an interaction with the actor, according to a story published Monday by the New York Post.
Brand, Minogue said, made her extremely uncomfortable when she appeared as a guest on his MTV show 1 Leicester Square by commenting on her “fabulous breasts” and following her down a hallway to ask for her phone number.
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“He always goes that step too far,” Minogue said at the time. “Never quite far enough to slap his face, but usually too far. I certainly don’t think he has cured his sex addiction, that’s for sure. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Also on Monday, old comments that Kristen Bell made about Brand in 2010 went viral. During the filming of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which Brand played a sex-crazed rock star, his co-star Bell “made it really clear from the beginning that I would sock [Brand] in the balls if he tried anything,” the actress said in a Daily Mail interview.
“He didn’t try to mess with me or get in my pants,” Bell said at the time. “He knew I would lop his nuts off.”
Old clips of Brand are also cropping up that illustrate just how outlandish his behavior could be. In 2013, for example, he bounced actress Katherine McPhee on his lap on The Tonight Show while shouting “For the queen!” despite McPhee looking visibly uncomfortable.
Elsewhere, in a 2013 podcast interview that’s since been scrubbed from the internet, Brand joked that he’d “raped someone once” and “killed her after.” In the same interview, he joked about ancient Greek mathematicians raping children: “They didn’t mind it, did they? They were clever, weren’t they? I’ve done another triangle. I’m fucking a little kid. This is great. Fuck the kid with the triangle. No, that’s too much.”
Over the weekend, the Daily Mail also republished excerpts from a 2014 book by model Jordan Martin, who dated Brand for six months. In the book, Martin said she was sexually assaulted by Brand, whom she renamed “Randall Grand” in her book.
“When we had sex it didn’t seem natural,” Martin wrote, “and a lot of what happened wasn’t pleasurable, it didn’t come from a good place.” Martin recounts an incident where “Grand” invited two lesbians to their shared home and tried to convince her to participate in sex with them. When she refused, “Grand” stood in front of her, blocking her way.
“Afterwards he said it was boring,” Martin wrote. “He was always sad after these encounters. His manipulative side was so powerful it was easier to just submit. I got to the point where I thought he must be right—and there was no one else around to tell me any different.”
People are also resurfacing inflammatory comments that pop star Katy Perry, who was married to Brand from 2010 to 2012, made about her ex. She told Vogue in 2013: “At first when I met him he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they’re like, ‘I can’t handle the equalness.’ He didn’t like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting.”
Perry continued: “I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day. I let go and I was like, ‘This isn’t because of me; this is beyond me.’ So I have moved on from that.”
Perry has not yet publicly commented on the new allegations against her ex-husband.
Numerous women alleged that they were sexually assaulted by Brand between 2006 and 2013, according to a joint investigation shared Saturday by the Times of London and Channel 4. On Monday, The Guardian reported that London’s Metropolitan Police had received a report of another alleged sexual assault linked to the weekend allegations against Brand.
Brand preemptively denied the allegations in a YouTube video on Friday, saying, “The relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then. Almost too transparent, and I’m being transparent now. To see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny, makes me question: Is there another agenda at play?”
