Netflix's 'Russell Brand: Open Secret' Dredges the Jokes He Made About Rape

One week after Russell Brand received a prison sentence of 10 years and six months for rape and sexual assault, Netflix has released a documentary dissecting the career that preceded his conviction. "Russell Brand: Open Secret," made by 72 Films, charts the former comedian's rise to fame and his reinvention as a political influencer while rumors about his behavior intensified around him.

The film builds its case through old roommates, ex-partners and fellow comedians, and through rare archive footage of Brand's earliest gigs. In one, he performs with a sack over his head. In another, he offers audience members pornography. The through-line is blunt: Brand joked about sexual predation on stage, repeatedly and in plain sight.

What does the documentary reveal about his early career?

Before the media career took off, around 1999, Brand was an out-of-work actor paying rent with a job at a London language school. There, according to the film, he began dating one of his pupils, Amanda Alguero Alejos. Alejos says she propositioned Brand and that the aspiring comedian was "nice and sweet" when they met. The relationship faded as his fame grew. "There were too many girls around him all the time and we couldn't have intimacy together anymore," she says. "And at the end he admits he had a sex addiction." Alejos also alleges he took "a lot of" drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Brand has said publicly that he has been sober since 2002.

His television career began with boundary-pushing that ended jobs as fast as it created them. After landing his breakthrough gig on MTV in the U.K., he was sacked for dressing up as Osama Bin Laden the day after 9/11, his former roommate confirms in the documentary. He then took a show on the little-known network U.K. Play, where in one episode he challenged his father, Ronald, to a boxing-ring fight. The two had a difficult relationship. As the roommate puts it: "Russell decided to settle this once and for all and thought it was a good idea to put it on camera."

The film also revisits a trip Brand has admitted in his own books and television appearances. His father took him to Thailand, hired two sex workers — one for Brand, one for himself — and the pair spent the night side by side in a hotel room. Archive footage shows the two discussing it on a television show. "Do you remember that first night?" Brand asks. His father replies: "Oh yeah. You fell in love every time."

What do the women in the film allege?

Among the contributors is Jordan Martin, an ex-girlfriend who describes Brand as controlling, abusive and repeatedly unfaithful. She alleges he sexually assaulted her after an argument and that he made her brush her teeth until her gums bled. "He wanted me to taste anonymous," she says. "He didn't want me to be familiar to him and so he was asking me to brush my teeth but it was just never enough."

Last week, another ex-girlfriend, Jemima Goldsmith, accused the former comedian of "violence and abuse." She said she once had to call the police to remove him from her house "during a violent incident."

The archive material carries its own charge. An early MTV clip shows Brand on a cell phone before telling the camera: "That was the Metropolitan Police Force; apparently I'm wanted for a series of terrible crimes." In an on-stage Q&A filmed years later, he describes himself as "just a bloke from Essex, from a single-parent family that's a pretty comprehensive show-off. Oh and also I raped someone once." Another early performance, cited by the film, includes the line "I raped someone once."

How did Brand become a political influencer?

The documentary frames Brand's political turn as a survival strategy. After his divorce from Katy Perry and amid growing rumors about his conduct, he glommed onto the far Left, presenting himself as a revolutionary figure with columns in the New Statesman and the Guardian. He then pivoted to the far Right, recycling conspiracy theories and courting audiences on both sides of the aisle — audiences, the film implies, more likely to believe his innocence if the allegations ever surfaced.

The Sunday Times reporters who broke the first story alleging sexual harassment and abuse say they offered Brand a right of reply. They received a letter from his lawyers stating their client "believes there is a deeply concerning agenda to all this, namely the fact that he is an alternative media broadcaster competing with mainstream media."

Brand was convicted of rape and sexual assault last week and sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison. "Open Secret" now enters a streaming catalogue primed for exactly this kind of post-verdict reckoning, and it will likely shape how a mass audience reads a career that the film argues was hiding in plain view.