Russell Brand Sentenced to 10 Years, 6 Months After Rape Conviction
Russell Brand, 51, has been sentenced to 10 years and six months for rape and sexual assault. His 2007 memoir implied Kylie Minogue was partly to blame for his MTV firing, but left out that he turned up on September 12, 2001, dressed as Osama bin Laden.
Comedian Russell Brand, 51, has been sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison after a jury found him guilty of rape and sexual assault. Years before, Russell Brand blamed Kylie Minogue in part for his firing from MTV, a version of events that left out a key fact.
The sentence has drawn fresh scrutiny of how Brand told his own story. A commentary in The Sydney Morning Herald argued that the verdict undermines the spin he applied for years to his behavior.
The MTV story
In his 2007 memoir, Brand described being fired from MTV six years earlier. He was still an active drug user then, he wrote. He said he invited his dealer and the dealer's eight-year-old child to the set, where the two adults smoked crack in a bathroom before touring the studio.
By his account, Minogue, a guest on the show that day, endured an "awkward chat" with the dealer. "I thought: 'It don't get any better than this.' And it didn't, cos they sacked me about two days later," Brand wrote.
What he stressed far less is the date. It was September 12, 2001. Besides smoking crack at work, Brand had arrived dressed as Osama bin Laden, which the commentary calls the far more likely reason he lost his job.
Asked about the sacking later on a US talk show, Brand said that "when I was a crack and heroin addict, I made some unusual decisions". He called his costume "the worst time to do it in many ways".
Reframing the past
Brand returned to the habit in a two-hour interview with US right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly earlier this year. Asked about allegations involving a teenager, aired in 2023 but not part of this criminal trial, he said: "I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30." He added that he was "an immature 30-year-old".
That framing suggests a single encounter. The woman, now an adult, has said they had a relationship for three months while she was still at school, according to the commentary. Kelly did not press him on it.
She said Brand told her to save his number in her phone under a girl's name to avoid her parents' suspicion. She also said he nicknamed her "the child".
In court
Last month Brand told the court that his friends, colleagues and acquaintances had abandoned him. He said none would give evidence in his defense. Two of his former girlfriends and his wife nonetheless gave the jury warm portraits of him, one ex calling him "gentle, warm, kind and adventurous".
Other allegations against Brand that have surfaced are now under investigation by UK police.
