Russell Brand’s former girlfriend has alleged that the comedian sexually assaulted her and forced her to brush her teeth until her gums bled because he wanted her to “taste anonymous”.
The allegations feature in a new Netflix documentary released today, following Brand’s conviction and sentence of ten years and six months for assaults against four women.
Russell Brand: Open Secret traces the 51-year-old’s journey “from comedy stardom to a criminal trial”, according to Netflix.
The documentary combines interviews and archival footage to examine Brand’s personal life and the investigation led by The Times and The Sunday Times, involving Chief News Correspondent Rosamund Urwin and Investigations Correspondent Charlotte Wace.
Its release comes as six additional women have reportedly made allegations of sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour against Brand.
Brand was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Monday after being found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.
Among those speaking in the film is Brand’s former girlfriend Jordan Martin, who said she was in “quite a vulnerable place” when they began dating, having recently separated from her husband.
“I’d given up on love,” she recalled.
Ms Martin, who was 26 at the time, alleged that Brand made her repeatedly brush her teeth until they bled and sexually assaulted her during an episode of jealousy.
Jordan Martin became tearful while describing her allegations that Russell Brand sexually assaulted her and forced her to brush her teeth until her mouth bled
Netflix’s new documentary examines Russell Brand’s “meteoric rise and steep fall”
“He wanted me to taste anonymous. He didn’t want me to be familiar to him. So he told me to brush my teeth.
“But it was never enough. He was standing over me while I brushed and brushed, and I could see my teeth bleeding. The association with…”
Ms Martin became too distressed to continue and requested a break.
She also described an incident at a UK hotel, where she used her phone to contact a former partner about collecting belongings he still had.
After Brand realised who she had been speaking to, Ms Martin said: “He snatched my phone out of my hand and broke it apart into pieces. I grabbed it back and went into another room.”
She continued through tears: “He walked in without saying anything, put his hand down the front of my jeans, inserted a finger and then walked away.”
Ms Martin said she did not report the alleged assault or tell anyone at the time, instead choosing to “sit with it quietly”.
She also recalled travelling with Brand to Hawaii while he was filming. According to Ms Martin, he asked her to accompany him “to stop him from trying it on with people on set”.
She alleged that Brand criticised her clothing, saying she dressed “like an attention-seeking slut”, and accused her of flirting with members of the crew.
The allegations emerged as Brand was reportedly being considered for transfer to the notorious “Monster Mansion” prison, where Lostprophets singer and convicted paedophile Ian Watkins was stabbed to death last year.
The six new accusers reportedly include women who say Brand had sex with them without consent or continued after they had withdrawn their consent.
Another woman alleges that Brand grabbed her by the throat and sexually assaulted her in a hotel room. A further accuser claims he tried to pull her into a disabled toilet at a London venue as recently as 2015.
The Netflix film arrives amid calls for tougher safeguards in television, with industry leaders facing pressure to protect young women from predatory entertainers following allegations involving Brand and David Walliams.
The documentary’s allegations follow Russell Brand’s sentence of ten years and six months for assaults against four women
Russell Brand: Open Secret will be released on Netflix on November 13 and follows Brand “from comedy stardom to a criminal trial”
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is due to meet broadcasters next week after claims that alleged misconduct by Walliams, like the allegations surrounding Brand, was an “open secret” within the entertainment industry.
Both men are said to have wielded considerable influence and generated substantial revenue for broadcasters, allowing their alleged behaviour to go unchallenged.
Walliams, 55, has denied allegations that he groomed schoolgirls, sexually assaulted a 15-year-old and repeatedly solicited sex from teenagers. He has said he is “not a sexual predator”.
Ms Nandy has promised to “draw a line in the sand” when she meets entertainment executives, warning that legislation could follow if the industry fails to act.
She said: “A decade and a half after the revelations about Jimmy Savile, and ten years after the MeToo movement, we must finally take meaningful action to end abuse and harassment.”
Television producer and presenter Richard Osman has said he believed Brand was “awful… right from the beginning”, although the two men never worked together or met.
Osman was a creative director at Endemol UK, the production company that gave Brand a major opportunity when it hired him to host Big Brother spin-off programmes in the mid-2000s.
Osman said: “I never worked with him and never met him, but right from the beginning I thought he was awful. I thought he was talentless.” He added that he had heard Brand was regarded as “a sleaze”.
He was Endemol UK’s deputy creative director in 2004 and became creative director the following year, working primarily on quiz and game-show development and production.
Brand joined Endemol in 2004, three years after being dismissed from his first television presenting role at MTV for arriving at work dressed as Osama bin Laden on September 12, 2001.
Following treatment for drug addiction, Brand secured the presenting role on Big Brother’s spin-off programme Big Brother’s Eforum, later renamed Big Mouth, which Endemol UK produced.
Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with co-host Marina Hyde, Osman discussed what he had heard about Brand during the comedian’s rise to fame.
“Coming from the heart of the comedy and entertainment industry — although I would argue Russell Brand belonged to neither and operated in an industry of his own —”
“I never worked with him or met him. From the beginning, I thought he was awful and talentless.”
Osman continued: “But none of that is illegal, right? I simply had no interest in working with him. I can’t imagine any genuine comedy producer being particularly keen to do so.
“He wasn’t someone who could work as part of a team, so I knew that about him.
“I knew who he was from his work at MTV and elsewhere, and it wasn’t something that interested me. As he became more famous, you heard that he was a sleaze. Again, that isn’t illegal, but it isn’t pleasant either.
“He was not someone you would want to work with. I heard he was sex-obsessed and surrounded himself with people who shared that attitude.”
During Brand’s time presenting Big Brother’s Big Mouth, he allegedly turned production staff into “pimps”, asking them to identify audience members who could become “lambs to the slaughter” in his bedroom.
A Dispatches investigation broadcast by Channel 4 in September 2023, produced alongside The Times and The Sunday Times, prompted more women to come forward.
A Channel 4 review conducted in 2024 found that one complaint had not been passed through the senior management chain.
Banijay UK, the production company behind Big Brother and the former owner of Endemol, also found that staff had made informal complaints that were never escalated.
Banijay said in 2024: “We are extremely sorry to anyone affected by this behaviour who felt unable to speak up, or whose concerns were not properly heard.”
Later in the podcast, Osman discussed when he and others in the television industry first became aware of rumours surrounding Brand.
“There was a moment of reckoning in 2017 or 2018 — forgive me if I can’t give an exact date — when the industry understood that this was someone who had committed illegal acts,” Osman said.
“From then on, he no longer worked in British television. People in the industry began speaking to journalists, and that started a very, very long process.”
Osman and Hyde rejected the suggestion that Brand’s conduct was universally known, saying that although “some people” were aware, the allegations did not become widely recognised in their sectors until the turning point around 2017 or 2018.
Osman said: “As for the idea that everyone knew, everyone knew from 2017 or 2018. That was when he stopped working here and went off to America.
“By then, he knew people were aware because he had been confronted about it by people in the industry.”
Hyde added: “We can see that Katherine Ryan, at a certain point, made accusations as clearly as she could within the legal limits.”