Russell Brand’s former girlfriend has alleged that the comedian sexually assaulted her and forced her to brush her teeth until her gums bled because he wanted her to “taste anonymous”.
Her allegations appear in a new Netflix documentary released today, following Brand’s conviction and his sentence of 10 years and six months in prison for assaults against four women.
Russell Brand: Open Secret charts the 51-year-old’s journey “from comedy stardom to a criminal trial”, according to Netflix.
The film combines interviews with people close to Brand and archive footage, examining his career and the investigation led by The Times and The Sunday Times, involving Chief News Correspondent Rosamund Urwin and Investigations Correspondent Charlotte Wace.
The documentary arrives as six additional women have reportedly come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour by Brand.
Brand was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Monday after being found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.
Among those featured in the documentary is Brand’s former girlfriend Jordan Martin, who said she was in “quite a vulnerable place” when they began dating after separating from her husband.
“I’d given up on love,” she said.
Ms Martin, who was 26 at the time, described how Brand allegedly made her brush her teeth until they bled and sexually assaulted her during what she characterised as a jealous outburst.
Jordan Martin became tearful while recounting her allegations that Russell Brand sexually assaulted her and forced her to brush her teeth until her mouth bled
Netflix has announced a documentary examining Russell Brand’s “meteoric rise and steep fall”
“He wanted me to taste anonymous. He didn’t want me to be familiar to him. So he told me to brush my teeth.
“But it was never enough. He was standing over me while I kept brushing, and I could see my teeth bleeding, and the association with…”
Ms Martin became too distressed to continue and asked the filmmakers to pause the interview.
She also recalled an incident at a UK hotel after she used her phone to contact a former partner about collecting a bag of belongings.
Ms Martin said Brand became angry when he discovered who she had called. “He snatched my phone out of my hand and broke it apart into pieces,” she said. “I managed to take it back and went into a separate room.”
She continued through tears: “He walked in without saying anything, put his hand down the front of my jeans, inserted a finger and then walked away.”
Ms Martin said she did not report the alleged incident or tell anyone at the time, choosing instead to “keep it quiet”.
She also said she travelled with Brand to Hawaii while he was working on a production. According to Ms Martin, he asked her to accompany him “to stop him from trying it on with people on set”.
She alleged that Brand criticised her clothing, saying she dressed “like an attention-seeking slut”, and accused her of flirting with members of the crew.
The allegations come as Brand is reportedly being assessed for a possible transfer to the notorious “Monster Mansion” prison, where Lostprophets frontman and convicted paedophile Ian Watkins was stabbed to death last year.
The six new accusers reportedly include women who say Brand had sex with them without consent or continued after they withdrew their consent.
Another woman alleges that Brand grabbed her by the throat and sexually assaulted her in a hotel room. A further accuser claims he tried to pull her into a disabled toilet at a London venue as recently as 2015.
The Netflix film comes as television executives face pressure to strengthen safeguards for young women and girls against predatory entertainers, following the scandals involving Brand and David Walliams.
The allegations in the Netflix documentary follow Brand’s conviction and 10-year-six-month prison sentence for assaults against four women
Russell Brand: Open Secret arrives on Netflix on November 13 and follows Brand “from comedy stardom to a criminal trial”
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is due to meet broadcasters next week after claims that Walliams’ alleged pursuit of young women was, like Brand’s behaviour, an “open secret” in the entertainment industry.
Both men are alleged to have wielded considerable influence and commercial value, allowing their conduct to go unchallenged, according to reports.
Walliams, 55, has denied allegations that he groomed schoolgirls, sexually assaulted a 15-year-old and repeatedly asked teenagers for sex. He has said he is “not a sexual predator”.
Ms Nandy has promised to “draw a line in the sand” during her meeting with entertainment leaders and warned that legislation could follow if the industry fails to act.
She said: “A decade and a half on from the revelations about Jimmy Savile, and ten years on from the MeToo movement, we must finally take meaningful steps to end abuse and harassment.”
Television producer and presenter Richard Osman has said he believed Brand was “awful… right from the beginning”, although the pair never worked together or met.
Osman was creative director at Endemol UK, the production company that gave Brand a major television opportunity by hiring him to host Big Brother spin-off programmes in the mid-2000s.
Osman said that although he “never worked with [Brand] and never met him”, he had regarded him as talentless and had heard that the comedian was known as “a sleaze”.
He served as Endemol UK’s deputy creative director in 2004 and became creative director the following year, concentrating on the development and production of quiz and game shows.
Brand joined Endemol in 2004, three years after MTV dismissed him for arriving at work dressed as Osama bin Laden on September 12, 2001.
Following treatment for drug addiction, Brand was given a presenting role on Big Brother’s Eforum, later renamed Big Mouth, in 2004. The programme was produced by Endemol UK.
Speaking on his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment with co-host Marina Hyde, Osman discussed what he had heard about Brand as his profile grew.
“From someone who was in the heart of the comedy and entertainment industry — and, by the way, I would argue Russell Brand was in neither of those industries; he was in an industry all of his own,” Osman said.
“I’ve never worked with him and never met him. Right from the beginning, I thought he was awful. I thought he was talentless, all of that.”
“But that’s fine. None of that is illegal, right?” Osman continued. “I’m not interested in working with him. I can’t think of any actual comedy producer who would be particularly interested in working with him.
“He’s not someone who can be collegiate. So I definitely knew that about him.
“I sort of knew who he was. He was working on MTV and things, and I thought, ‘That’s not something that interests me.’ Then he became more famous. You certainly heard that he was a sleaze. Again, that’s not illegal, but it’s not nice.
“He wasn’t someone you would want to work with. He was a sleaze, he was sex-obsessed and he ran around with a group of people who shared that same aesthetic.”
During Brand’s tenure hosting Big Brother’s Big Mouth, he allegedly encouraged production staff to act as “pimps”, identifying audience members he could pursue as “lambs to the slaughter” for his bedroom.
Women began coming forward after a Dispatches investigation for Channel 4 in September 2023, conducted in partnership with The Times and The Sunday Times.
A Channel 4 review the following year found that one complaint had not been escalated through the senior management structure.
Banijay UK, the production company behind Big Brother and the successor to Endemol, also concluded that staff had made informal complaints that were not passed on.
Banijay said in 2024: “We are extremely sorry to anyone who was impacted by this behaviour and felt unable to speak up, or who felt their voice was not properly heard.”
Later in the podcast, Osman discussed when he and other industry figures first began hearing rumours about Brand’s conduct.
“There came a point of reckoning in 2017, 2018 — forgive me if I can’t give an absolutely specific date — when the industry understood that this was a person who had committed illegal acts,” Osman said.
“From that moment, he didn’t work in British television. People in British television then began speaking to journalists, and that started the very, very, very long journey.”
Osman and Hyde challenged the suggestion that Brand’s conduct was universally known, saying that although “some people” were aware, the allegations were not widely understood across the industry until the turning point around 2018.
Osman said: “As a starting point on the idea that everyone knew, yes, everyone knew from 2017 or 2018. That was when he stopped working again and scuttled off to America.
“At that point, he knew people knew because he was confronted about it by people in the industry.”
Hyde added: “We can see that Katherine Ryan, at a certain point, made accusations as clearly as she possibly could within the legal boundaries.”
