Armie Hammer has spoken out regarding the leaked messages where he purportedly claimed he was ‘100 percent a cannibal’.
In 2021, Hammer faced allegations of sexual assault, rape, and claims of cannibalism—all of which he has denied.
Following a two-year probe, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office announced it would not press charges against the actor for the sexual assault accusations, citing ‘insufficient evidence’.
Among the accusations, a text conversation from January 2021 was leaked to the public where Hammer allegedly stated he was ‘100 percent a cannibal’.
The text further read: “F**k, that’s scary to admit. I’ve never admitted that before. I’ve cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm.”
During an interview with Louis Theroux on his podcast, The Louis Theroux Podcast, Hammer explored the context of these messages.
The actor commented: “I think the most important context to give these kinds of things is they are one side of a conversation. As you’ll notice, of all of the text messages that were released, the person who released them, their side was cut out of the entire conversation.”
“It makes it look like I was just rambling to myself. I mean, if you look, there’s really no response in any of the excerpts,” he noted.
Hammer argued that ‘digitally altered evidence is immediately inadmissible because you have no context’ and suggested that the screenshots ‘could have been a very funny conversation between two people who were joking and pushing each other and egging each other on’.
“In the way that sometimes you see comedians pushing the boundary further and further when they’re having a conversation,” he added. However, he concluded, “I’m not going to argue the messages.”
Despite one side of the conversation being missing, Theroux pressed further with the question: “Are you a cannibal?”
Hammer replied: “You know what you have to do to actually be a cannibal? You have to actually eat human flesh. So no.”
Hammer pointed out that the text exchange is an instance where ‘sometimes’ in a relationship, ‘you guys are having sex and you are a bit of a provocateur and you are exacerbated by alcohol or drugs or anything like that like It’s fun to ruffle feathers and it’s fun to push the envelope little by little’.
He emphasized that he never intended ‘cutting anything off of anyone or eating anything off of anyone’ and that there was never truly anything he desired; it was merely ‘fun to joke about’ when he was ‘stoned or drunk’.
“That’s where context comes in. You make jokes, I’m sure, with your friends that if I took your phone, and made them public, and removed your friend’s half of the jokes, you would probably be in hot water,” he explained further.
Hammer concluded: “And that’s why, this is why I say to everybody who wants to have an opinion on what they’ve seen or what they’ve read about me is like, okay, you can say whatever you want.
“You can judge me as much as you want from any public platform that you want. Give me your phone for 45 minutes before you do it. And almost everyone goes, Ooh.”
Last year, Hammer shared with Painful Lessons that he was able to view the cannibal accusations ‘with a sense of distance’ and found them ‘hilarious’.
He also expressed gratitude for the events that unfolded, noting that before the accusations, he ‘didn’t feel good’.
The Louis Theroux Podcast is now available on Spotify.