Armie Hammer has returned to the spotlight with a new podcast and isn’t shying away from discussing his controversial past.
On the first episode of “Armie HammerTime,” which dropped Monday, the embattled actor addressed the allegations of cannibalism and sexual abuse that torpedoed his career.
“It’s wild,” he told guest Tom Arnold. “I’m not going to lie, I kind of like the cannibal stuff now.”
The “Call Me By Your Name” star was at the center of abuse and misconduct accusations in 2021 when several women came forward to share details about their romantic and sexual relationships with him.
In early 2021, an anonymous Instagram account released unverified text messages allegedly claiming Hammer harbored cannibalistic fantasies. The same woman later came forward saying he “violently” raped her for hours in 2017.
Other former girlfriends made similar accusations of mental, emotional and physical abuse, all of which Hammer denied.
Due to lack of sufficient evidence during a subsequent investigation, Los Angeles prosecutors chose not to pursue charges against the actor.
“The accusations are the thing that make so much noise,” Hammer elaborated on the podcast. “Like, what makes more noise? ‘Armie Hammer is a cannibal’ or ‘Armie Hammer might not be a cannibal?’ The cannibal thing makes more noise and you don’t get an apology tour in this world. Like, someone says something about you, everyone believes it, and they move on with their lives to whatever it is they’re focused on, because they’ve got their own lives.”
Amid the controversies, Hammer’s wife filed for divorce, he exited high-profile projects and he later checked into an unnamed Florida facility to seek treatment for drug, alcohol and sex issues.
“When something like this happens, we do all this work on ourselves, not so that we can get the jobs back but so that we don’t care if we get the jobs back,” he told Arnold. “I think that’s where I feel like I am now.”
In an Instagram video on Monday, Hammer said the podcast — filmed in a rent-controlled building on a $150 couch purchased through Facebook Marketplace — will feature “long-form, interesting conversations with people who have tools or skills or have acquired wisdom… that I don’t know [and] I want to learn.”
“Some of you are going to love this, and some of you are going to f—ing hate it,” he added. “The original idea of the podcast was sort of the concept that over the course of a day every single person you interact with knows at least one thing that you don’t. So, teach me what that one thing is.”
