S4 EP5: Armie Hammer discusses allegations against him, being shunned by famous friends, and his unconventional family history

27:06I don't do it to a partner who doesn't enjoy it. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I'm having sex with these people, right? I'm in a relationship of some kind with these people. I want them to enjoy themselves as much as I'm enjoying myself. There's no part of me that wants to foist any part of my sexuality on anyone who's not a willing participant. And in fact, if I do something sexually to someone and they enjoy it, I get gratification from that. If I'm having sex with someone and they're not enjoying it, the programming that I have, the messaging that I get goes, oh, see, you're not good at this.

27:37And that's not what I want. Like, I enjoy being sexual with the people that I'm sexual with. And I enjoy their pleasure just as much, if not more, than my own. so why would I have sex with people in a way that they don't enjoy there's no gratification there for me there's nothing that I get out of that and by the way just to get back to Courtney alleging that I bit her um I and I'd be I'd be happy to show you and more than willing but uh you know I have text messages from her during our relationship about how much she enjoyed it and and like her taking pictures of the bite marks and sending them to me and saying I love this look at this, look at this one, this one's beautiful.

28:15Like, I have all those things. You went out with her for about four months, I think. If that long. One of the things that Effie contended was that you were cheating on your wife, not just with her, but with other people as well. No, Effie was the first time that I ever stepped out of my marriage. I'd never cheated before that. And then that caused a separation and all that stuff. So in the marriage, there was not more than her. I mean, Effie alleged a lot. Did you happen to see the two years worth of tweets from Effie herself where she was saying she wants my nine-year-old daughter to be raped?

28:57I did not see that. This is a person who's not well, you know. This is a person who everybody without choosing to vet or choosing to sort of critically examine said, yep, this all must be true. Army must be a cannibal rapist. Because one of the things, I don't know if it's her account or someone else's, there's also this account on Instagram, Army Hammer Victims. Have you seen that? I don't know if she's managing that. Some of the allegations are about men, that there are male victims. I heard about that. I've never had sex with a man in my entire life. Someone told me that on there, there was a man who accused me of raping him and doing all of these terrible things to him.

29:45And the second I heard that Armie Hammer victims or whatever it is was sort of like touting this as one of my victims. When, as I said before, I've never even had sex with a man. then I immediately just go oh okay well then this source this site this page whatever it is if they're going this guy said this it must be true when in fact I know for a fact that it's not then that makes me question every other thing that's ever been on that page because it's like well I don't know where that story came from but I can tell you where I think it came from Where do you think it came from? From, you know, people wanting to jump on a wave, people wanting attention, people wanting to be a part of a community.

30:30They get a lot of attention. They get a lot of support. They get a lot of people online being like, we're with you. You know, stay strong. We love you. That kind of thing, which is currency these days. That digital affirmation, that digital attention, all of that is a main form of currency these days. That makes me question the validity of the whole thing. So initially, this goes viral. And just getting back into our timeline, 2021, it kind of ripples through the Internet and through the gossip magazines and newspapers. And what happens next? Your jobs start kind of drying up. You were signed up to do a series about The Godfather, the making of The Godfather called The Offer.

31:15There was also a movie with J-Lo, is that right? Yeah, Shotgun Wedding. So what? Talk me through what happens next. All my jobs went away in the blink of an eye. There wasn't a process. It just all seemed to happen overnight. Jobs, representation, everything just went boom. It was a complete death. It was a career death. It was an ego death. It was a financial death. It was all of these things. but you know Jung and Joseph Campbell talk about the idea and concept of death a lot. Joseph Campbell specifically he says things like you know the hero must die so the hero can be born again. There was a lot of aspects to Armie Hammer that I didn't identify with that I didn't relate to that I just didn't actually feel were a legitimate part of me and that death killed off all of those things.

32:12It killed off all of the ego. It killed off all of the bullshit. It killed off all of the pretense. And I spent three years and change really having to examine myself and really having to look at myself and really having to go woof all of the external validation that I was getting. Not only did it go away, it turned into global hate. So I can't rely on that to make me soul. So I needed to stop and I needed to figure out who I was and I needed to figure out what I was about. And basically I spent the last couple of years taking care of my father as he died, taking my kids to and from school every single day, spending time with myself alone, learning to love myself.

33:02It really now with a sense of distance and perspective from it, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Did you, you know, there was a raft of obviously A-list stars you'd worked with over the years. I wrote a list, just a quick one before this call, just so I'd have them at my fingertips.

33:25Julia Roberts, you were in with Mirror Mirror. Jesse Eisenberg, obviously, Social Network, Timothy Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name, Johnny Depp, Lone Ranger, Leonardo DiCaprio, you were in the movie, J. Edgar, the Clint Eastwood movie, and many, many others, right? But those are just obviously big marquee names. These were people I imagine you would have called maybe friends or been on friendly terms with. To what extent were you able to rely on goodwill or a sense of, you know, what does that look like when you're in the spotlight as a potential rapist or predator, right? How does that all shake out?

34:06um i remember i was talking to this guy he's an old jamaican guy and i was complaining about how i might get an email or a text message or a phone call of someone in any position of power or prestige or authority or whatever and they would say dude like i know you i like this is not you whoever these people are talking about it's just not you like this is so wild to me and I was complaining to him about it and I was saying like anyone who reaches out to me which is which was basically no one but like anyone who reaches out to me and says this to me like don't do that like say this publicly like this is this is crazy that this is happening and this was very early on in the situation I've learned a lot since then but one of the things he said to me was what kind of fucking friend are you?

35:03And I go, what are you talking about, dude? I'm a great friend. I would do anything for my friends. Like if my friend needed, I would give a friend my car, like whatever it is, I would do anything for my friends. That's the kind of friend I am. And he goes, yeah, you think so? You think you're a good friend? And I go, no, I know I'm a good friend. He goes, really? He said, your house is on fire and it's burning to the ground around you. What happens to your friends if you ask them to run into your burning house? And I thought about it for a second and I said, they would get burned. And he said, do you want your friends to get burned?

35:39And I said, no, I don't. And he said, if you were really a good friend, what would you want for your friends? And I thought about it for a bit and I said, I would want them to stay as far away from the fire as possible. And he patted me on the leg and he said, now you're thinking like a good friend. And he stood up and he walked away. You know, there were many people out there for whom you're toast. Like, you know, there's everyone out there, right? There's a whole spectrum of opinion. And on one side, there's people that, you know what? I believe anyone who says they're a victim. And there's several people here saying they're victims.

36:15He's done, right? And then on the other side, there'll be kind of manosphere adjacent people who are like, you know, a man can't be a man anymore. and there was a lynch mob that came for our man army and it's an injustice. You know, obviously I don't know exactly what happened. I do think there's a very plausible scenario, though, in which you, you know, as a good-looking, at the time rich, famous, talented Hollywood actor, was able to get his needs met, his sexual and, to an extent, emotional needs met, in a way that was kind of cutting a swathe and that your tastes were quite spicy, right? That your tastes were a little bit more out there than you might find for some people.

37:02What am I basing that on? I don't know. Just instinct, I guess. And also the sort of sense of, I guess, outrage and the feeling that, you know, for most people, these fantasies might seem extreme, biting, whatever. And that, in other words, that you kind of leveraged your fame and your charisma to slightly coax people out of their comfort zone and they were cocooned in a feeling of, OK, I might one day be Mrs Hammer, right, or this is going somewhere, he's serious about me, and they ended up feeling violated. Does that sound like a plausible scenario? Does it sound plausible? Sure. Do you think that's what happened?

37:41I think it's very hard to put yourself in any situation and say, this is what I think happened and really encapsulate the entire situation. Are you entitled to the opinion? Absolutely. Are there portions of that that might be right? Absolutely. Is there more to the story than that? There could be. It's all up for interpretation. And I think that people are allowed to have whatever opinion they want. I just wonder whether, because even in the airmail story, it's like people, I got the sense that people were saying, dude, you need to be careful. Like, this is not wise. Like to have adventurous, you know, if I can put it euphemistically, adventurous, playful, creative, edgy sex as a famous person with people who you maybe don't know that well.

38:29There's an aspect of that that is true. Was I engaging with unsafe people? Yeah. Was I being reckless on my own part? Sure. Yeah. Did I ever do anything illegal? Did I ever do anything intentionally to hurt anybody? No. You joked in an article in L a year or so before, maybe a bit longer, before all this stuff came out in 21. You said, my wife says I have a frontal lobe issue and your frontal lobe controls danger responses. Sure. I mean, every male who's under, I think, 26 or 27 has a frontal lobe issue. it's not fully developed till then so yes and you have a tattoo that says chaos I do talk to me about that uh it's it's a wonderful reminder that I thought I was enjoying a chaotic life when in fact the chaos was enjoying me a lot more than I was enjoying it so I mean I've thought about removing it but I'm very happy that it's there now it's almost like a warning sign.

39:36So it sounds like you've, what's the best way of putting it? You no longer feel that's a watchword for you, that actually maybe that's not the most helpful. What do you mean? Well, that you don't subscribe to the idea of chaos, that actually that's a phase you've moved on from, you've grown out of that. I should probably get boredom on the other arm. You know, Like, I mean, that's where I'm at now in my life, is the idea that if I'm ever bored, then all boredom is, is serenity unappreciated. So enjoy the serenity. How long have you been sober for? I didn't drink for about three and a half years.

40:18Not a drop of alcohol, not any drugs, nothing like that. And where are you at now? I would say that while I don't necessarily practice physical sobriety anymore, I don't get drunk. I don't get high. I don't get stoned. Not because I'm afraid as an addict that if I go have a drink, I'm going to be sucking dick for crack in the alley. It's not that for me. I just don't do it because I don't enjoy it anymore. There's nothing about that that's attractive to me. There's nothing left in that world of alcohol or drugs or partying. there's nothing left in that world that I didn't try. And I can tell you that of all the things I tried, nothing made me as happy as I feel today.

41:01Just being calm and being chill and being a good dad and being there for my kids.

41:31So you were... I mean, we should paint a picture for the listeners. Your work dried up. It sounds like your phone calls weren't being returned. Your agents dropped you. Oh, it's not that my phone calls weren't being returned. I changed my number. I got a flip phone and I disappeared. What happened? So what were you doing at that point? Were you sober then or did that come later? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it came very shortly after everything happened. I realized that there was going to be nothing that was added to the situation by me playing with matches and, you know, drinking or doing drugs or anything like that.

42:06Like, that was not what was needed in this situation. What was needed in this situation was actually me facing this, letting pain be the teacher, letting suffering be that thing that is promised in every major world religion, but that thing that is our great teacher. Concretely, what were you doing? Like, were you, you were living in L.A.? Did you go straight into rehab? No, I was down in the Cayman Islands. And then what did you do? You went to Florida for rehab? I did, yeah. I went to a trauma treatment facility. It was a dual diagnosis place. They do substance alcohol addiction as well as trauma treatment.

42:43So I got to work on all of my issues. I got to work on all of my childhood trauma. I got to work on any sort of substance issues that I might have had. Or more accurately, instead of substance abuse issues, I would say that I got to work on the core issues of why it is that I did the things that I did. Why did I drink the way that I did? Why did I do drugs the way that I did? Why did I engage sexually in the way that I did with the people I did? I got to really sort of peel back all of that. And it still to this day remains one of the most helpful things that I've ever done for myself. And what did you find?

43:20I mean, to put it very simply, a lot of validation issues, a lot of self-love issues, A lot of trauma that was untreated and manifesting in ways that I was not specifically in control of. I enjoyed the two-part podcast episodes you did where you interviewed your mom. One of the things that comes up is, well, first of all, your mom is an evangelical Christian. She says her number one priority is Jesus Christ. and it's also mentioned that and forgive me if this is i mean if we don't need to talk about this if this is uh uncomfortable so let me know but can i mention uh what you talk about sure so it's mentioned that you um you were abused that you were one of a number of victims and and that your parents seem to be hesitant or not quick to kind of endorse the fact that your claims were real and needed to be taken seriously and that in some way you didn't feel heard so you had the abuse and the feeling of having to deal with it on your own is there any way to relate that to um what happens later i mean i i don't want to i'm sure i mean i'm not a easy causal links right so I don't want to be like, OK, it all makes sense.

44:47I'm not a therapist, but I think that it would be very difficult not to relate that in some way with reverberating effects through the rest of your life, of anyone's life. And, you know, my mom and I spent hours talking. There were aspects of that that I needed to look at and that I needed to process and that I needed to come to terms with and I needed to accept and I needed to move through so that that, as well as any of the other traumas that I've experienced or that anyone's experienced, for that matter, don't have sort of shadow effects on the rest of their life. There's another narrative, and this is the one that's outlaid in the series.

45:31Have you seen the series House of Hammer? No, I watched about half of the first episode and chuckled kind of through it. It relies heavily on my aunt who claims to be some authority on me or my behavior. And this is an aunt that I have never in my life spent one on one time with ever. Yes, this is your father's sister. Although a lot of her testimony is related to your grandfather, Julian. But then 50 % of the people interviewed about me, I've never met in my entire life. So I think calling it a documentary is a bit of a stretch. So it's kind of a succession-ish saga. It starts with Julius, a Russian-Jewish businessman who's also one of the founders of the American Communist Party.

46:19His son, Armand Hammer, becomes an oil mogul, makes tens of if not hundreds of millions. then his son Julian, your grandfather, is a little bit of a tear away, shoots a man over a debt for$500, kills him, is a sort of Hugh Hefner figure going around drinking and drugging in his dressing gown. I don't know if that's fair to Hugh Hefner. Right. The picture they paint is a trickle down of trauma and debauchery in which all the male figures... Generational trauma being passed down. Absolutely. But also a sense of entitled, untouchable sexual insatiability. Like they're all fucking and basically getting away with it.

47:01I think that's maybe one way to look at it. I don't know. I didn't have relationships with any of these people. Just to kind of pull back a little bit, the idea of generational trauma is not specific to my family. I think for me, my focus and my takeaway is, is like I was operating while asleep and allowing the traumas to drive the car. And then this happened to me, and it woke me the fuck up. And then I said, hold on, I have to, instead of running with these things at my back, I got to turn and face these things so that I don't pass them on to my kids. Like, I would like to be the last one to deal with this so that my kids don't have to.

47:43And so I don't have to for the rest of my life. And that's exactly what I did. You're referring, you did that by getting the treatment. You feel as though that kind of was a major game changer for you that that's enabled you to sort of out. It started the process, but it's constant. The work is never done. You know, I didn't walk into a treatment center and walk out healed and healthy. I mean, it is still an ongoing process and it will be for the rest of my life. It's, you know, it's an interesting question. Like, to what extent is your, you know, is one's dysfunctionality part of oneself, right?

48:19Or indeed... Oh, it's a huge part of everyone's self. What do you leave when you strip away? Do you still consider yourself... Your beach ball analogy, do you still consider that your sexual interests remain the same to some extent? Do you consider yourself part of the kink scene? Do you still feel as though that it would be dangerous to sublimate or repress some of those appetites that might be more outré? Here's what I think my answer for this is. At that time in my life, I was doing almost everything in my life in a less than healthy way. There was an extremity to everything that I was doing, even the way that I ate.

49:09I mean, at that point in my life, I was probably eating several Big Macs a week because I loved the way they taste. So I would go eat Big Macs as like an immediate gratification kind of thing. The unhealthiness in my life bled into everything. My sleep habits, my eating, the way I engaged with people, it was pervasive. Being in a healthier place in my life now, couldn't tell you the last time I engaged in some of the unhealthy behavior that I was doing before. And I'm really happy about that. Are there aspects to me that I cleared the dirt and debris away and the core of what it is is still the same?

49:54Sure. So what's left when you clear it away? And again, I don't want to embarrass you or your kids. No, no, no. You're fine. But I'm also specifically about, because genuinely I'm curious about, I mean, I've made documentaries about sex, about both healthy and healthy sexual impulses, but about sex workers. I've also made about sexual predators. I have a kind of interest in almost like just on the level of like, what can we not consent to? Like, and there's these questions about, well, where is the line? There was a case in Germany. Do you know about this guy who basically advertised for someone who he wanted to eat?

50:32Like, this is one of a few documented cases of actual cannabis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Videotaped the whole thing, invited him around. They took sleeping pills. They cut his penis off, cooked it in garlic and white wine, fried it. and then they ate it together and then the guy died. I think he bled to death. But it wasn't legal. Like, that's not legal. You cannot legally consent to be eaten and then killed. That makes sense to me. So within all of that, there's a spectrum of like, well, so what does healthy kinky sex look like? Do you know what I mean? To what extent is that part of your lifestyle?

51:07How do you intend to make sure that you kind of keep that within the right parameters? I would say this to you. I think that it's probably not a stretch for me to ask you to understand that my sexuality, whatever it may be, has been so weaponized against me that discussing it in any sort of like open form like this just doesn't feel safe. Yeah, I understand. I mean, if we accept what you're saying, you have reason to feel, I would say, aggrieved, right? Like, and maybe angry. Here's what I would say that I feel about it. There were periods, specifically early on in all of this, where I was extremely angry.

52:00and I felt like I was taken advantage. All of these things. There was a period where I was very angry that all of this was happening. This person said I was a cannibal and this person said I was a rapist and everyone believed this person without checking anything. I'm now at the place in my life where the only thing that I feel for everything that happened is grateful. They were a necessary step in my life to bring upon the death of a guy that I didn't even relate to, that I didn't identify as, and that did nothing for me. It was this mask. It was a shell. It was a fake version of me. You're being very hard on the old army.

52:51I'm sure there was a lot about the old army that you probably did like. Oh, there was a lot about him I liked, for sure. He was a fun dude. He was a likable dude. You know, up until this all happened, there wasn't anybody who had anything bad to say about me. Nobody. But at the same time, it wasn't me. That facade has been stripped away. I'm inviting people into sort of the open, vulnerable, real version of me that's not glitz and glamour. That's not an artificial facade. You know, I mean, the business now, Hollywood, Instagram, influencers, all of those things, it's kind of all bullshit. Are you getting offered acting work?

53:37Mm-hmm. How much acting have you done since 2021 when it all broke? I just finished a movie that we shot in Arizona called Frontier Crucible, and it's me and Thomas Jane and William H. Macy. and then I'm going to go do another movie in January and then I've got another movie in March. I've got a TV show that I was just offered. I've got offers coming in every week, basically, to the point where I'm having to turn down jobs. This was Frontier Crucible, directed by Travis Mills? That's the one. He announced on Instagram, he's back. Always fun to shock the fake news regime media with an ice pick to their matrix.

54:19Chomp, chomp, harpies. he's a character. But you know what? You probably needed a character to give me my first job out of the gate. Yeah, exactly. Do you think there's a part of him that's basically up for taking a risk because he's either not fussed about or he actively wishes to discombobulate the mainstream or, you know, the censorious? Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe both. I don't know. You'd have to ask him. We didn't have that specific conversation, So I can't speak for him. Has it changed your view? Because you had spoken out, in fact, in House of Hammer, they show you wearing a Time's Up pin.

55:01You've spoken out against Harvey Weinstein back in the day. And I think you used the phrase woke mob in one of your comments, the idea that the woke mob had come for you. I'm just wondering, has it given you a different view of the culture, of Me Too, of anything like that? I would say now I'm much less likely to accept anything I see or hear at face value. I think that there is a level of critical thought that I now have, having seen the other side of it. Who said it? I think it was Reagan who said, trust but verify. I think that blindly trusting anything that you hear, either from the farthest right or farthest left or dead centre, trusting anything that you hear at face value without wanting to do your own research or wanting to confirm, I think is dangerous.

56:09And I think it puts you at the subject of winds tossing you all over the place. it was said that Robert Downey Jr. paid for your rehab is that true no did you read that or I misremembered it no I read that I read that somewhere I don't know where that came from but at the time I still had insurance so my insurance covered it did he reach out and support you in some way um yes yeah did you have to think about that um i thought about whether or not i want to pull anyone into this this is that burning house thing again you know i think that anyone who expressed support of me put themselves in the line of fire if you've got a couple more minutes I'd love to keep going just for a few more.

57:01Is that all right? Sure. One thing that came up when all of this was being reported was that you'd been spotted, that you were sort of laid so low that you'd been spotted selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands. Can you shed any light on that? I loved it. It was fun. I mean, it was really kind of the first desk job that I've ever had in my entire life. But by the way, like I was at the point in my life where like things were so bleak that having anything to do felt amazing. So when I look at, you know, because I was also the greenskeeper for a school at one point. A school where? In the Caymans as well?

57:39In the Cayman Islands. I, you know, sort of helped manage an apartment building. And I sold timeshares. And honestly, I was having the time of my life. I went to work every day. I enjoyed the people I was working with. I got to wear my little khaki pants and a polo shirt and sell timeshares. I loved it. Like, there's no shame in it for me. Like, I loved it. And then what? And the Cayman government then said, oh, we think he's morally too dubious to do this anymore. So did that happen? What happened exactly? Oh, I applied for multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple work visas in the Cayman Islands and was rejected every single time, even though my dad was Caymanian, even though my dad had given a lot back to the island.

58:23But I also understand that if half of the things that were said about me online were true, if just half of them were true, I probably wouldn't want me somewhere either. So are you persona non grata there at this point? No. You can still go back? Yeah, I can still go back. I can't live there.

58:46um ndas what's the deal with getting ndas before you hook up with someone is that the way it's done in hollywood now i think ndas are are pretty much bullshit they're non-enforceable and the only people who think ndas actually do anything are probably not the smartest people in the world was that a hollywood thing like stars and big and and celebrities would be like yeah if we're going to get together, you need to sign some paperwork. Sure. I mean, I knew people who were in the film business who before they interacted with someone sexually would make them sign an NDA and then would make them fill out a consent form of list exactly the things that you consent to.

59:29I never did that. I would imagine that that's a bit of a buzzkill in a sort of like sexually heated situation of like, OK, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. OK, real quick, just fill out this paperwork. But you know what? I mean, that's where we got to. That's what people felt they had to do to be safe. Your mum paid for you to have a vasectomy for your birthday. She did. We talked about it on the podcast, yeah.

59:52That's pretty weird. Different strokes for different folks. Did you ask for it or she offered it? It was born out of a conversation where, you know, I'm sure I said I have two beautiful children and I'm good. I don't want any more kids. and I think that probably snowballed into a conversation of like I would probably love to get one of these but I can't afford one it probably turned into well is that what you want for your birthday sure that sounds great thanks was it painful no yeah I mean you know it's you don't even go under you can go under if you want but they just do local and they just get right in there snip and you're done doesn't affect sensation or anything doesn't even affect output i was gonna say i was trying to find a way about asking that output is the same yeah well i mean you know i think i'm not a doctor but i think only like five to ten percent of what you actually ejaculate is semen if even that high so the rest of it is just prostate fluid i mean that's why they say you know men should ejaculate regularly for prostate health.

1:01:02Just kind of clear it out, keep it moving. Are you in a relationship at the moment? No. Very much happy to not be in a relationship, to have control of my own schedule, to be with my kids, and to not have to worry about anyone else's emotional well-being, and to just be okay being alone. So how do you ensure regular ejaculations then? I'm sure you can imagine. Yeah.

1:01:35Probably the same way anybody does if they're not in a relationship. Taking self-love to a whole new level.

1:01:46Okay. How often do you masturbate?

1:01:51That's what the world wants to know. Well, no, I'm asking for your prostate health. I'm very concerned, Louis. I mean, they say, I think men need to ejaculate about 20 times a month and it reduces your chance of prostate cancer by something like 60%. So I'd like to see you somewhere close to that number. I find the subject of masturbation kind of interesting. Interesting in what way? Well, that actually there's a sort of an element of the so-called red-pilled community, the community of men's rights. Okay. They've sort of revised the view of masturbation. They sort of feel they're very anti-porn and anti-masturbation.

1:02:34Anti-porn, I understand. I mean, porn is bad for our brains. It's terrible for us. But I think that porn and masturbating can be kept separately. You know, I mean, there's an aspect of masturbating that's just about self-pleasuring that doesn't need to be an inundation of graphic images that desensitize us or pervert, if you will, our perception of women or our perception of sex. I think that those two things can be kept very separately. What do you feel is the damaging part of pornography? I think that people are learning how to have sex from pornography when pornography specifically is not sex education, it's sex entertainment.

1:03:17If you learned how to be a man from only watching old westerns, you'd probably grow up being a gunslinger where if someone looked at you wrong you shot him I think that pornography also desensitizes us and also makes us hyper critical of the partner we might be with well that woman on porn had tits like this or her ass was like this or she did this and that you know it's like we we build this up this idea and I think it perverts our perception of reality and makes reality less satisfying. And I think you get a lot of guys who sort of end up anhedonic about the whole thing because of pornography.

1:04:02Anhedonic, meaning sort of pleasureless from the Greek anhedonia, right? And without anhedonia. Yeah. Do you feel like you've been cancelled, to use the buzzword? And if so, what have you been cancelled from? Yeah, I would say that I would say, yeah, that I got cancelled. I mean, literally, I was fired. All my representation cancelled working with me. But I also think that cancelled is a weird code word for this whole Hollywood system. That instead of saying that I was cancelled, I would say that I was forcefully removed from the system. And now I'm very grateful to have found my own life with my own meaning independent of that system.

1:04:58Now, you know, it's me and producer Jerry sitting in my room doing this because we enjoy it, because we like to. We didn't need anyone to say yes to us. We didn't need anyone to give us permission. We just started doing it. And that's something that I never got when I was working in the Hollywood system. If Woody Allen offered you a role in his new movie, would you take it? Would I work with Woody Allen? I mean, at this point, I don't know that I'd buy into any of the cancel, we need to this and that. Like, I don't know. I mean, I know that this is like a trick question and I know there's no right way to answer this question.

1:05:47But I think I think, well, no, because like if I say no, I would never work with Woody Allen. Then all I'm doing is saying I believe in this system that cancels people. I think what I would honestly do is I'd say I'd like to sit down with him first and I'd like to talk to him. And if I walked away from that conversation going, you know what? I think that he's a good man. I don't know that I believe everything that people are saying about him. Then being someone who had the world say a bunch of stuff about me that I knew wasn't true, I'd go, oof, I get what that feels like. That sucks. All right, yeah, let's do it.

1:06:24But if I walked away from the conversation going, I didn't get a good vibe, maybe there is fire where there is smoke, then I wouldn't do it. I forgot to mention your co-star is Kevin Spacey, and it's produced by Harvey Weinstein. Ha ha ha. Oof. what are they paying?

1:06:47All right, thanks, man. I appreciate it. Did you have anything else you wanted to say? No, I mean, I don't love the way the interview started, just to be perfectly honest. I'm not crazy about drudging up all of this stuff, because for me, a lot of these issues have been resolved, whether it be legally or within myself. and I feel like a lot of those waters have settled. I think doing things like that stirs up the water again unnecessarily. It definitely wasn't my favourite beginning. I'm glad we moved past that and got to a place where we could have a civil, normal conversation. Like, that felt good, but dredging up all that stuff, like, I don't love it.

1:07:30I hear you and I sensed that during the chat. I think in the court of public opinion, the jury is still out. But my thing now is, like, the court of public opinion, like pick anything that the court of public opinion has an opinion on. And there's a very good chance that they will not be fully informed. There's a very good chance they don't have the full story. And there's also a very good chance that they're probably wrong. So I don't pander to the court of public opinion anymore. It's not anything that I feel I have to do. I certainly don't let the court of public opinion determine or run anything about my life anymore.

1:08:06I did that for a long time. I would say that I lived my life based on other people's fear for my life. Well, you can't take that job because then, well, you wouldn't know, but you can't do, oh no, no, no, you can't, you can't play a gay character. Like all of those things that still exists. And I think that for a long time, I let other people's fear dictate my life and how it went. And I think a lot of that fear is unsubstantiated. I think a lot of it is bullshit. it. And I think a lot of the court of public opinion is really still the public opinion of the court because we keep drudging things back up again.

1:08:40I'm very happy that in my life, I feel like I've moved through all of that. And there are no aspects of my life where that stuff still touches my day to day, other than the fact that it highlighted for me exactly how much work I needed to do on myself, which is still a daily process. And that's my journey. My journey is not not convincing anybody. My journey is not explaining myself. My journey is not advocating for myself. I just, that's just not where I'm at. I mean, I get that on things like this, that stuff needs to come up, but I'm just very happy to report that that's not a part of my life anymore.

1:09:19I hear you. It's tough because I get that this isn't a therapeutic space and you don't owe me accountability, certainly not in the sense of your personal growth. But nevertheless, anytime you do an interview, I think, with anyone who takes on the burden of attempting to address the narrative as it exists in the public space now, this is what you will be going through. I get it. I get it.

1:10:02OK, here I am back. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the episode. It's obviously a little different from some of the others we've done. I have an appetite for going into places that are difficult, morally complex or even deeply controversial. And in a world where we are trying to be accepting of, you know, people who think otherwise, or even just being, as it were, understanding about different lifestyles, like we want to be, we don't want to stigmatize people who have tastes other than our own. the kink world has been through you know historically a lot of stigmatisation and there's also I think attention there you know at what point does consensual abuse become something more complicated and there's clearly a place where all of these things are hard to police in a way that feels fair but nevertheless that's what we have to do he said hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

1:11:07Do you know the source? If you said Shakespeare, you'd be wrong. It was actually the 17th century dramatist William Congreve. I'd give you the exact quote, but I can't be bothered. If you're keeping a bingo card, inappropriate, here we are, you can mark off Woody Allen and also the word woke, which I think should be on the bingo card. Don't you? What else do we say? I mentioned the text messages allegedly sent from Effie to Armie concerning her working in a sex dungeon. Effie denies saying this. The quote is, I have never worked in a dungeon and I have never told Armie I've ever worked at a dungeon.

1:11:48End quote. Armie mentioned that the image of the bite mark he allegedly gave Courtney Vucekovich had been removed from the House of Hammer documentary on the basis that it was an image from Pinterest. It's worth noting that Courtney maintains that Armie sent this photo to her. This is the quote from Courtney. The bite mark shown was a photo sent by Armie within our archive text thread. I believed it to have been a photo of me given that I have dozens of photos depicting his abuse on my body. House of Hammer, I think I can say it's worth a watch. It's a well-made documentary series, I would say.

1:12:26Armie also claimed that Effie told him she wanted his nine-year-old daughter to be raped and cited her tweets as evidence of this. On her Twitter account, Effie has posted a screenshot of an alleged exchange with Army, saying, I honestly can't wait for your daughter to grow up and karma to happen, and also tweeted that, My rapist should imagine men doing to his daughter everything traumatic he's done to me. If you've been affected by the topics discussed in this episode, Spotify do have a website for information and resources. Visit spotify.com slash resources. I think that might be about it. Other than credits, the producer was Millie Chu.

1:13:08The assistant producer was Emilia Gill. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. And the executive producer was Aaron Fellows. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. Thanks to Abbas Media Law for their assistance on this programme. This is a Mindhouse production for Spotify. I love you.