Just eight days after a London court found comedian and actor Russell Brand guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, sentencing him to 10 1/2 years in prison, this new Netflix documentary looks back on his troubled life with insight from people close to Brand as well as the investigation led by two reporters from The Times and The Sunday Times (which buttressed the 2023 Channel 4 documentary that ultimately prompted authorities to prosecute Brand).
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that → find → Brand
The Gist: Brand, made famous in the States for his roles in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, as well as his brief marriage to Katy Perry, and since the pandemic his conspiratorial videos on conservative video platform Rumble, was even more famous and infamous for longer in his native England.
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Brand → make → England
This film features interviews with his early housemates and girlfriends from before he ever performed stand-up comedy or got his first gig on MTV, combining eyewitness testimony and footage to trace his life and career through his substance abuse addictions to his sex addiction, from MTV to BBC Radio 2, through scandals that only seemed to propel him to new professional heights.
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that → feature → heights
We see and hear from people who lived with Brand, who slept with Brand, who claimed they were verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by Brand.
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they → see → Brand
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?
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It → remind → You
This documentary comes from the same company that produced Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, about another formerly treasured British TV icon who turned out to be a sexual predator with many victims in his wake.
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who → come → wake
The doc opens with a warning about graphic descriptions of sexual violence, and encourages victims or those triggered to visit a Netflix site offering hotline support: https://www.wannatalkaboutit.com/
Our Take:
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doc → open → support
Where this doc goes farther and further than past exposes about Brand is by putting front and center people who saw his behavior firsthand.
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who → go → behavior
There’s his former housemate, Mark Pinheiro (seen in footage from the late-90s/early-00s), who had met him in an acting class and offered him a room in his flat, only to see a young Brand both spiral into his addictions whilst somehow breaking through as a TV presenter.
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Brand → ’ → presenter
There’s Amanda Alguero Alejos, a former girlfriend who met Brand when he was teaching her English as a Second Language and called him “my first love,” only to see him fall quickly to the temptations of fame and female fans.
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him → ’ → fame
There’s Georgina Baillie, the woman at the center of “Sachsgate” (where Brand got fired from BBC Radio 2 after calling her grandfather, Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs, on the air with Jonathan Ross to brag about shagging her).
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Brand → ’ → her
And there’s Jordan Martin, another former girlfriend who visited Brand on the Hawaii set of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, only for Brand to accuse her of flirting with other men whilst he cheated openly on her, made her feel small, and later, allegedly sexually assaulted her during an angry fit.
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her → ’ → fit
“I just felt like I was in a constant state of confusion,” Martin says.
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Martin → feel → confusion
She wrote a thinly veiled memoir about her time with him, “kNot: entanglement with a celebrity.”
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She → write → celebrity
What took so long?
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What → take → ?
British comedian Nish Kumar, the first person we see talking in the doc, said “people were threatened that if they spoke about it, there would be legal action brought against them.”
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they → see → them
After several montages of Brand’s conduct onstage and on TV, we hear later from Kumar: “When you look back at that material, he was sort of bragging about the things that he was doing, which is obviously, quite sort of bleak now.
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which → hear → that
I really wish that we had all taken him at his word.
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we → wish → word
Urwin says she began investigating his conduct in 2019, and at first, women would talk but not on the record.
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women → say → record
His victims — alleged and confirmed — feared litigation and public blowback.
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victims → allege → litigation
Looking through both his stand-up and his prolific writing, Urwin and her journalistic partner wondered why book critics didn’t stop to ponder the questionable behavior he had already committed in print.
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he → look → print
“I couldn’t believe how much he was admitting to.
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he → believe → much
It’s quite a clever bit of hiding.
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It → ’ → hiding
You tell people this stuff, so you’ve normalized it.
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you → tell → it
So the rest of the stuff maybe gets lost because you’ve already admitted to so much.
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you → lose → much
But there’s so much damning footage in retrospect, including his radio call with David Walliams, his friendship with Sean Combs (who co-starred with him in Get Him to the Greek), and even quotes from his ex-wife Katy Perry (not interviewed for this doc).
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who → ’ → doc
That the courts found Brand guilty and sentenced him to prison means it was all worth it to them.
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it → find → them
As Martin, whose testimony wasn’t part of the trial, says now: “This is about me saying it’s OK to speak up, be brave enough to speak up.”
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it → say → trial
It’s a tough watch.
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It → ’ → ?
But this was clearly not a rush-to-broadcast doc; as with their initial investigation, this film was researched and just waiting for the judicial shoe to drop on Brand.
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shoe → rush → Brand
But it does have to make us wonder, as Kumar points out, how ashamed we must all feel for letting his antics (and crimes) go on for so long, and why his pivots to politics, American conservatives and evangelicals found so many sympathizers.
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pivots → have → sympathizers
But that’s another documentary.
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that → ’ → ?
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat.
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McCarthy → work → beat
He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
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Comic → podcast → Things
The Aporia
