The stars who ‘knew’ about Russell Brand
Viral clips show celebrities exposing Brand and Danny Masterson years ago—or do they?
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Thank you for letting me briefly step back into my entertainment writer role.—Kate
Today, whenever a big piece of news is published, it immediately forks into two stories: There’s the original, “objective” report, and the internet narrative. For example, the news last week was that Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner are getting divorced; the narrative was that Jonas was preemptively stealth-attacking Turner in the press.
Last weekend, the UK’s Sunday Times, the Times, and Channel 4’s Dispatches published one allegation of rape and three allegations of sexual assault against comedian turned reactionary wellness guru Russell Brand. The objective story was clear. The internet story, however, got kind of weird.
Aside from the predictable rightwing innocent-until-proven-guilty-what-about-isms, the report has been widely accepted and Brand roundly condemned by both the public and the companies he works with. Many even claimed that they weren’t surprised by it, because so many people in the entertainment industry had already heard rumors or allegations. But rather than reckon with what the lack of action on that information says about the nature of power and fame, people on the internet glommed onto a sort of gamified, celebrity-absolving counter narrative: That for years, famous people had been heavily hinting to the public about Brand being a bad man.
The evidence? Context-less clips, posted on Twitter and TikTok, that, in hindsight, seem meaningful. There’s David Lynch saying he wouldn’t collaborate with Russell Brand while sitting next to him at a talk. Bob Geldof calling Brand a “cunt” after being introduced by him on stage. Sean Lock saying he wouldn’t want his daughters to bring him home.
A similar thing happened when actor Danny Masterson was convicted of rape. In this case, the clip was of Conan O’Brien joking, “I heard about you and you’ll be caught soon,” after Masterson tells a weird anecdote about how he pronounces the word “balls.” “Conan knew,” the tweet reads, as if O’Brien, having that knowledge, would have planned to bring Masterson on Late Night, banter with him, and then drop that truth bomb under the guise of one of his typical cracks.
I don’t know what, if anything, any of the celebrities in these clips knew about Brand or Masterson (British tabloids have speculated that Brand dated Geldof’s daughter Peaches when she was a teen and Brand was in his 30s), but if they did know, should they be lauded for acting on it by making what seem to be jokes onstage with the person, or working him into a bit? Shouldn’t that praise be reserved for Katherine Ryan, who called Russell Brand a predator to his face at a television roast, only to have the interaction cut from the broadcast?
I don’t know who knew what, when, but the bigger story about Danny Masterson and the allegations against Russell Brand is that nobody did shit with what they did know. We don't just need to be careful about who we blame on the internet—we need to be careful about who we celebrate.