Russell Brand described his “very promiscuous” past in newly released footage from a police interview.
The footage, published by the New York Post, shows Brand being questioned by the U.K.’s Metropolitan Police over earlier sexual misconduct allegations.
“As I’ve repeatedly stated publicly and written about extensively, I led a very promiscuous life in the past, which I’ve spent years openly denouncing,” Brand said in one portion of the interview. “I’ve never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity.”
The footage was released after the 51-year-old was convicted on Nov. 5 of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was acquitted of two other rape charges and one count of attempted indecent assault. Six women brought allegations against Brand, who pleaded not guilty to every charge and denied wrongdoing.
During his police interviews, Brand also criticized the 2023 documentary Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, describing the sexual misconduct allegations as “defamatory and fictitious.”
“Subsequently, both the media and the police publicly invited additional allegations to be made,” Brand told investigators. “Which resulted in further encounters being invented or reimagined.”
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“At present, I don’t recall the names of the complainants or meeting them,” he continued. “However, it’s entirely possible that I may have encountered them, and we may have engaged in consensual sexual activity or physical contact.”
He also said that “media attacks” focusing on his promiscuity had “caused consensual encounters to be unfavorably reframed decades later.”
Brand discussed his sexual history again during his four-week trial.
“Consent is more important than sex itself,” he testified on Oct. 28, while acknowledging that he had been wrong to use his fame to “facilitate sexual access.”
“I do recognize I have been a very determined and focused man,” Brand added. “With women, of course, which is the subject of my trial, I’ve been persuasive, seductive, begging and flirting, and dedicated a lot of my life to what seems now beyond reckless philandering, and idiocy.”
Brand was taken into custody after the verdict and is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 9. Under U.K. sentencing guidelines, a rape conviction can carry a prison term of four to 19 years, while the maximum possible sentence is life imprisonment.
