Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and sexual assault.
The comedian and actor appeared at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Friday for a hearing where he formally denied all five charges against him, including one allegation of rape, one allegation of indecent assault, one of oral rape and two further counts of sexual assault. The alleged incidents relate to four separate women in incidents that occurred between 1999 and 2005.
The 49-year-old will now face a trial, which due to court delays won’t begin until June 3, 2026.
Wearing sunglasses, an open pin-stripe shirt, jacket and skinny jeans, Brand arrived early Friday morning flanked by his lawyer Oliver Schneider-Sikorsky — who successful defended Kevin Spacey against sexual assault allegations in 2023. The hearing lasted a matter of minutes.
Brand was charged by London’s Metropolitan Police in early April following an investigation that began in September 2023.
He first appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on May 2, where the chief magistrate granted him bail and, due to the severity of the allegations, referred the case to London’s Central Criminal Court. The venue was later changed to the Crown Court, where Spacey’s trial took place two years earlier.
After the charges were first brought, Brand — now living in the U.S. — took to his social media channels to deny the allegations, as he has since they first arose.
“When I was young and single, before I had my wife and family, I was a fool, was a fool before I lived in the light of the lord, I was a drug addict, sex addict and an imbecile,” he said in a video. “But what I never was a rapist. I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.”
The Met investigation was first launched after the police received several allegations in the wake of a major investigation made by both Channel 4’s “Dispatches” documentary series and The Sunday Times.
The 2023 expose saw Brand accused of “rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse.” A rep for the show said that “Five women, four of whom asked to remain anonymous, agreed to share their stories of serious sexual allegations in the program.”
The plea of not guilty plea at Southwark marks the next chapter for Brand. While his star-power had already dimmed long before the allegations came to light, he was a major figure on British TV and radio in the mid-2000s and would later find fame and fortune in the U.S. thanks to movies such as “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Get Him to the Greek,” not to mention a high-profile if short-lived marriage to Katy Perry between 2010 and 2011.
Since moving out of the mainstream limelight a decade ago, he began amassing a following online for his political views, first on the left-wing before shifting to the right, using his YouTube and Rumble channels to post about conspiracy theories, most notable connected to COVID, and offer his support for Donald Trump, whose inauguration he attended in January.
Months after the expose ran in late 2023, Brand also converted to Christianity and has been outspoken about his new faith. Last year he prayed on stage with Tucker Carlson and later Jordan Petersen at events in the U.S. Earlier this month, Carlson went on social media to call for the Trump administration to “rescue” Brand from what the rape and sexual assault charges he described as “political and absurd.”
