Russell Brand admits sleeping with 16yo when he was 30: ‘I was a very different person! I was an immature 30yo!’

Russell Brand has been in damage control mode ever since he was hit by multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault. His response was the tried-and-tested method of suddenly embracing Christianity and cozying up to MAGA, presumably knowing they’ll excuse pretty much anything as long as you praise God, Trump, or (ideally) both.

Brand is due in court for his criminal trial in London in October but seems to be on something of a right-wing media tour at the moment. But, if he’s seeking to some image rehab, he maybe could have watched his words a little better while on The Megyn Kelly Show yesterday:

Russell Brand said that he slept with a 16-year-old when he was 30. pic.twitter.com/JLvvBo7hIo

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) April 23, 2026

“I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30. When I was 30 I was a very different person. I was a lot younger and I was an immature 30-year-old. Consensual sex actually, with a variety of people when there is a strong power differential, which there is when you’re a famous man that has the ability to attract women that I had at that time, I think involved exploitation.

I recognize that my sexual conduct in the past was selfish and I did not apply enough consideration – barely any I suppose really – to how that sex was affecting other people.”

Brand underlines that the age of consent in the United Kingdom is 16, so by British law he hasn’t committed a crime. But it’s safe to say that distinction is lost on many Americans reading this, who (absolutely correctly) perceive a 30-year-old man having sex with a 16-year-old girl to be either pedophilia or something alarmingly close to it.

“These men always deny any of these allegations brought to them”

But we don’t have to theorize about the negative effects of this; we have the 16-year-old in question to tell us directly. “Alice” was interviewed about this in 2023, confirming that she was 16 when Brand pursued her. She underlines that she was still in high school when Brand made his moves, with her mother doing “everything in her power” to warn her to stay away from him:

“She followed all those motherly impulses. She took my phone away. She grounded me… she would try to keep me confined to the house.”

She explains that she feels that Brand “groomed” her and that she felt “cheapened” by him, saying that she consequently developed an eating disorder. She also underlines that his cozying up to conspiracy theorists is a calculated tactic to maintain a support base:

“He just happens to have a YouTube channel where he talks about conspiracy theories to an audience that laps it up. And it may sound cynical, but I do think that he was building himself an audience for years of people that would then have great distrust of any publication that came forward with allegations. He knew it was coming for a long time.”

And Brand’s insistence that this was consensual?

“And as for him denying that anything non-consensual happened, that’s not a surprise to me. These men always deny any of these allegations brought to them. I knew he would. He didn’t deny that he had a relationship with a 16-year-old.”

Sadly, Brand is almost certainly correct that MAGA will now support him through basically anything so long as he keeps making the right noises. I mean, they idolize Donald Trump, so they’re already primed to forgive grown men preying on teenage girls!