Disgraced comedian and actor Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to two additional charges of rape and sexual assault.
The 50-year-old appeared at Southwark Crown Court in central London on Tuesday to enter his plea, related to two alleged incidents with two separate women in the British capital in 2009.
Last year in May, Brand pleaded not guilty to another five charges. These alleged crimes relate to a 1999 rape in the Bournemouth area of the U.K.; a 2001 indecent assault of a woman in Westminster, London; the 2004 oral rape and sexual assault of a woman also in Westminster; and the sexual assault of another woman in Westminster between 2004 and 2005. A trial date of June 3 was set.
The BBC reported that a hearing will be held to decide whether the new allegations should be joined to that case. A management hearing on that will take place in March.
In total, the Forgetting Sarah Marshall and St. Trinian’s actor faces criminal allegations of sex crimes against six women. He was photographed on Tuesday arriving and departing the Southwark court in a leopard print shirt with several buttons undone and a fedora hat.
Brand vehemently denies the claims made against him. Since the allegations have come to light, he has turned to Christianity and been baptized. He responded to the news in a video shared on his social media last year, stating: “I’ve never engaged in nonconsensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.”
Detectives began investigating in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations, which followed reporting by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times. One of the women told Dispatches that Brand entered a relationship with her when he was 31 and she was 16. Their relationship lasted three months, she had said, and Brand had been “emotionally abusive and controlling.” Another claimed that Brand raped her in 2012 in his L.A. home, according to the Sunday Times.
The claims against him date between 2006 and 2013, when Brand was at the height of his fame working on Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Kings of Comedy and Big Brother’s Celebrity Hijack.
