Women allege David Walliams abused celebrity power for sex

Multiple women allege that David Walliams abused his power and position as a celebrity to prey on them for sexual purposes when they were young women. That is the finding of a joint investigation by the Guardian and ITV News. Walliams denies the allegations.

The story hinges on one mechanism: fame, and the imbalance it creates. The women's central claim is that Walliams used his public standing — the leverage that comes with being a well-known entertainer — to pursue sex with young women who had less power in those encounters. It's the same framework that has shaped misconduct reporting across the entertainment industry for the past decade: not necessarily a dispute over what happened, but over what consent means when one person holds celebrity status and the other doesn't.

What does Walliams say?

Walliams responded in a letter addressed to the journalists working on the investigation. His statement concedes carelessness while denying abuse.

"Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with," he writes. "I realise I did not always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret."

He then addresses the power question directly, drawing the line the whole investigation turns on:

"Whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that I never did."

In the same letter, Walliams is categorical about the substance of the allegations. "I am not a sexual predator," he writes. "I have not broken the law, but I am devastated that some of the women I met 10 to 20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me."

Why the timeline matters

Walliams's own framing places the encounters in question between roughly 2006 and 2016 — "10 to 20 years ago," in his words. His defence separates two things: behaviour he now calls thoughtless, and abuse of power, which he says he "never did." The women's allegations, as reported by the Guardian and ITV News, contest exactly that distinction. Their claim is that the celebrity power gap wasn't incidental to the encounters — it was the tool.

He also states plainly that he has not broken the law, positioning the dispute as one about conduct and power rather than criminality.

What happens next

The Guardian and ITV News have published their investigation, including a video report, and the allegations — which Walliams denies in full — are now on the public record. The detail of the women's accounts sits in the fuller Guardian reporting, and the gap between "thoughtless" and "predatory" is now the question the entertainer will have to answer in public.