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19th September 2023
08:38am BST
Kristen Bell warned Russell Brand not to "mess with me" on the set of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it has emerged.
The 43-year-old played Sarah Marshall in the 2008 comedy, while 48-year-old Brand played her new boyfriend, Aldous Snow. The plot centred around Marshall's ex, Peter Bretter (played by Jason Segel) who is, as the movie suggests, trying to get over her. However, when he flies to Hawaii to help heal his wounds, his meets his ex and her new beau.
Bell's comments about her co-star resurfaced in recent days after Brand was accused of rape and sexual assaults in a joint investigation by The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches. He denies the criminal allegations.
During press for the Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in 2008, Kirsten said of Brand: "He didn't try to mess with me or get in my pants. He knew I would lop his n**s off."
In another interview, she said that she had "intimidated" Brand from the beginning and and threatened him not to try anything.
She said: "I made it really clear from the beginning that I would sock him in the b***s if he tried anything. So he was intimidated."
Despite the comments, Bell later conceded that she "loved" working with Brand, and joked: "I may be the only woman in the world who would shout that from the rooftops, but I did."
Brand was also complementary about Bell, saying she was the "perfect mate" for him.
Four women have accused Brand of sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, one of whom was 16 at the time, and the Met Police has urged any alleged victims to contact them and have said it is investigating another allegation from 2003. The Times and Dispatches report has since led to further alleged victims coming forward.
In the documentary, one of Brand’s accusers alleged he raped her against a wall in his LA home and that she sought treatment at a rape crisis centre the same day. Another alleged he assaulted her when she was aged 16 during an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship. A third claims Brand sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles and later threatened to take legal action if she spoke about the allegation to anyone else. And a fourth described being sexually assaulted by Brand and also claimed he was both physically and emotionally abusive towards her.
In a statement on Friday ahead of the report, Brand said the allegations against him “pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies, and as I have written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.”
He continued: “Now during that time of promiscuity the relationships I had were absolutely, always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent, and I am being transparent about it now as well.
“To see that transparency metastasised into something criminal, that I absolutely deny, makes me question – is there another agenda at play?”
Brand has claimed that there is witnesses whose evidence “directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct.”
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