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Russell Brand documentary: Former flatmate describes alleged bedroom incident. Photo / Getty Images
Russell Brand’s former flatmate has said he heard a woman “shouting” and trying to escape the comedian’s bedroom during an incident before he became famous.
Mark Pinheiro, who lived with Brand as a teenager, claimed in a new Netflix documentary that he entered a room after hearing a girl shouting
“Let go of me”, to find the woman “wrestling herself away from him [Brand]”.
The documentary also aired a fresh allegation of rape from a woman, referred to as Emily, who said she had previously been in a relationship with Brand, as well as an accusation of sexual assault by Jordan Martin, Brand’s former girlfriend.
Emily, portrayed in the documentary by an actress, accused Brand of raping her after she “begged him” not to have sex with her without a condom.
Martin claimed Brand forced his hands down her underwear without her consent moments after the two had had an argument.
The Netflix documentary, called Russell Brand: Open Secret, was released on Friday, a day after it emerged Brand had been accused of sexual misconduct by six more women.
On Monday, Brand was sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. The convictions were for offences between 2004 and 2009.
One of the six new claims reported by The Times on Thursday refers to an alleged incident in 2015. It is unclear when the allegations made by Pinheiro and Emily date from. Brand previously denied wrongdoing and claimed all his relationships had been consensual.
In the documentary, Pinheiro, who testified during the trial that Brand had “boasted” about wanting to sleep with “over 5,000 girls”, said he had offered Brand a room when he was “a bit down and out”.
Brand moved to London at the age of 16 to attend the Italia Conti stage school, from which he was expelled a year later.
Pinheiro described the time Brand had brought a woman into his bedroom before the situation became “really calamitous”. He said: “You’re hearing loads of noise, and you can hear the girl shouting, ‘Let go of me.’ I’m thinking this has gone on long enough.
“And so I open up my door, and I see Russell basically holding on to the girl with both of his hands, gripping hold of her arm trying to pull her back in like a tug of war. And she’s wrestling herself away from him, and then as I switch the light on, the light comes on and he lets go.”
Pinheiro said he told the woman he would “support” her if she sought to report the incident, although he did not know whether she did.
The allegation from Emily refers to a time before Brand became well-known, when she was in a relationship with him and she was in her late twenties.
She said he made her feel like the “most special person in the world”, despite him telling her “disturbing” stories of his sexual encounters with prostitutes. She said she had “understood” Brand wanted to have sex one morning, and had asked him to get a condom, but he had refused.
‘I literally begged him’
Emily alleged: “I said to him, ‘No, Russell, please, let’s just use protection.’ I kept saying no. I said, ‘Stop Russell, stop, please don’t, please.’ I begged him. I literally begged him.
“I tried to kick him off, I tried to draw my knees back, to kick him in his belly, but he was too strong for me, and he just pinned my hands back behind my head, and he just forced himself into me.”
She said that, while it was happening, “all I could think of were these horrific graphic stories about the prostitutes”, adding: “All I could think of was, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s going to infect me with something.’”
Reflecting on the alleged incident, she said: “No one should feel afraid because of something that happened a long time ago. It doesn’t matter, it still happened. I still said no.
“He should have listened to me. I believe Russell Brand needs to take accountability for his actions and recognise that what he understood or experienced as consensual from my side, was not consent.”
The documentary also retold Martin’s story, which was included in the Times’ 2023 exposé and detailed in a self-published book, kNot: Entanglement with a Celebrity, in 2014.
Martin repeated allegations that Brand had sexually assaulted her in a hotel in 2007 after they had an argument. She claimed she had gone to another room after Brand allegedly broke her phone, before he followed her.
She alleged: “He didn’t say anything. He put his hand down the front of my jeans. Sorry. And he inserted a finger, and then walked away. I look at myself back then and I feel sorry for myself. And not in a bad or pitying way, I just feel like it wasn’t very fair.”
She also claimed he had made her brush her teeth until her mouth bled, in an attempt to make her “taste anonymous”.
The documentary was made for Netflix by 72 Films.
Brand’s lawyers did not respond to the documentary’s request for comment. The Telegraph has contacted his lawyers for comment.
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