Director Olivia Isaacs on Making Netflix's 'Russell Brand: Open Secret'

By Grace Kim

Netflix released Russell Brand: Open Secret just over a week after a court sentenced the former comedian to ten and a half years in prison for rape and sexual assault. The film's director, Olivia Isaacs, says it was "more or less 99.9% ready" before the verdict came in — only end cards with the sentencing and a few legal checks remained.

Isaacs, whose previous credit is The Other Mrs Jordan: Catching the Ultimate Swindler, sat down with Variety hours after the documentary debuted. Her account of the production explains how a film about an ongoing criminal case actually gets made.

How do you film around a live trial?

Isaacs started work in November 2023, two months after the allegations against Brand broke and before any police investigation. Her team's focus, she says, was broader than one man: "We've got this man, this huge celebrity, and now these allegations. Is there a wider, broader piece to be done?"

UK law barred media from publishing anything that could prejudice the trial once Brand was charged. Isaacs says her team never planned to rush: "We do not want to impact any future trial." The finished documentary charts Brand's career and the media climate that let him flourish, but deliberately stays out of the courtroom.

An acquittal would have changed everything. "If he'd gotten let off, we potentially were looking at maybe we'd have to do a reversion down the line," Isaacs said. The film was made, she explained, with the mindset that it "would likely go out with some sort of guilty verdict."

Why was it so hard to find contributors?

Getting people to talk was the core difficulty. Isaacs is blunt: "It's been a litigious minefield for many years, reporting anything on Brand." She added that "easy" would never be her word for the process.

The obstacles were structural, not just emotional:

• Contributors had signed non-disclosure agreements, or believed they had been silenced.
• Many "didn't feel comfortable" even after long conversations.
• Trust-building was slow, requiring talks with as many people as possible.

The missing voices are the ones she wanted most: the enablers. "I'd always like to hold people to account as well and hear from that side and unfortunately those people did not want to sit in front of the camera and take accountability," she said. She named them precisely — "agents, exec producers, people who are minding the talent. People giving him the work."

That gap, she argues, is bigger than the film itself: "I think that is probably the most lacking voice out there at the moment, never mind the film."

What does the film say about Brand's transformations?

Isaacs frames Brand's shifting personas — from comedian to left-wing political voice to right-wing influencer — as the documentary's structural spine. Production ran roughly three years, which let her team chart the backlash to Me Too, the rise of the "manosphere" (the online network of male-focused, often anti-feminist communities), and Brand's migration into far-right conspiracy spaces.

"I was fascinated that his story takes us into the story of now and the 'dividedness,'" she said.

How do you protect a team from a hostile fanbase?

Netflix provided what Isaacs describes as a "nice web of support." The measures were concrete:

• Trauma-informed training early in production, for both the crew and contributors.
• Additional training on managing difficult material over a long production.
• Online security guidance, including teams that check filmmakers' digital profiles to ensure they aren't accidentally revealing home addresses.

She isn't dwelling on the fans, some of whom turned up at court to support Brand. "I don't think we've had any scaremongering to worry too much about the fans. There's always going to be people online," she said.

What does this change for documentary filmmaking? Isaacs suggests the industry has genuinely improved its duty of care — off camera as well as on — and that Open Secret models how to publish responsibly in a legal minefield. The next test, her missing voices imply, is whether the enablers ever agree to sit for the camera.