Armie Hammer, Home of Hammer, and the rape allegations, defined

Editor’s notice, Could 31, 2023: The Los Angeles County District Lawyer’s Workplace has introduced it is not going to cost Hammer over allegations of sexual assault. Hammer’s assertion will be discovered on Instagram. Our story on Hammer, initially printed in March 2021 and final up to date in August 2022, follows.

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On September 2, 2021, Discovery+ will premiere The Home of Hammer, a docuseries exploring the alleged misdeeds of the rich household of Hollywood actor Armie Hammer. The brand new collection is the newest in a string of ongoing disgraces to Hammer, who went from a Golden Globe nominee in 2018 to a person accused of abuse and sexual assault in 2021.

In March of 2021, Hammer, who’s most well-known for his position within the 2018 movie Name Me By Your Identify, was accused by a lady named Effie of violent rape and bodily abuse all through their four-year on-and-off relationship. In December of the identical yr, the LAPD wrapped the case with out urgent fees after a nine-month investigation. After Hammer apparently spent a while promoting timeshares within the Cayman Islands, in keeping with Selection, he’s now reported to be again in LA.

But Effie’s accusations have been solely the end result of a number of months of cloudy rumors and scandal swirling round Hammer, rumors that initially gave the impression to be extra entertaining nonsense than career-ending and probably prison accusations. When an anonymously run Instagram account first started to leak what gave the impression to be Hammer’s sexts in January 2021, early experiences tended to linger on the salacious element that Hammer apparently had a cannibalism kink. On the time, an off-the-cuff observer may simply conclude that Hammer was coping with a low-stakes case of innocent and juicy celeb gossip.

However as time went on, and ladies who stated they’d had previous relationships with Hammer continued to debate their tales on social media, it turned clear that they have been accusing the actor of way more severe conduct than a innocent consensual kink. They have been accusing him of manipulation and psychological abuse.

The story would result in Hammer getting dropped by his agent, departing from a number of initiatives, and apparently beginning a brand new profession as a timeshare salesman. When Loss of life on the Nile, more likely to be his remaining movie, got here out in July, Hammer was all however erased from the publicity push. Now, he and his household scandal are on the heart of their very own true crime streaming present.

Right here’s what it is advisable know to know the Armie Hammer story, and the downfall of one among Hollywood’s hottest film stars.

Armie Hammer’s household background contains plenty of cash, plenty of dysfunction, and many sexual sadism

Keystone Options/Getty Pictures

Armand “Armie” Hammer comes from a background of immense privilege and immense dysfunction. He’s an inheritor to the Occidental Petroleum fortune, and in 2009, he was photographed in a Vainness Honest unfold of heirs and heiresses that included Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. His great-grandfather, additionally named Armand Hammer, invested in Arm & Hammer baking soda to make a joke in regards to the title. That’s the form of cash we’re coping with right here.

And as detailed in a latest Vainness Honest article by Julie Miller, the Hammer fortune is linked to some fairly messed-up household patterns.

The primary Armand Hammer, who made the household fortune, was intently linked to Soviet Russia: Lenin at one level inspired Stalin to lend Armand “specific help” in order to develop a path to “the American ‘enterprise’ world.” He additionally laundered cash, made an unlawful contribution to Richard Nixon’s reelection marketing campaign that almost definitely went on to paying for the Watergate cover-up, and was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush for the unlawful contributions.

Most related to our pursuits right here, the elder Armand’s relationships with ladies and along with his kids have been reportedly very disagreeable. Miller chronicles how Armand pushed his lover of over 10 years to legally change her title; put on wigs, glasses, and make-up to alter her look; drive a automotive with a homing system and use a tapped cellphone; and undergo sexual calls for she discovered “extraordinarily humiliating.” Armand assured her he would maintain her after he died. As an alternative, he left her out of his will.

Armand would equally cross over his son Julian — Armie’s grandfather — and as a substitute go away his enterprise empire to Michael, Armie’s father. Miller’s Vainness Honest piece particulars the uneven backgrounds of each Julian and Michael, which embrace misdeeds starting from merely sordid to allegations of prison exercise.

At age 26, Julian killed a person over a playing debt and pleaded self-defense; the costs have been dropped. His daughter Casey, Armie’s aunt, has additionally accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a toddler and bodily abusing different family members.

Michael, in the meantime, apparently frittered away items of the fortune he was left by his grandfather in a collection of shady enterprise offers. Per Vainness Honest, his largest pursuits are partying and pretty kinky intercourse. Maybe essentially the most eye-popping a part of the entire story is the outline of Michael’s “intercourse throne,” which Michael’s lawyer assured Vainness Honest was one among quite a few “unsolicited gag items despatched by mates”:

The construction, about seven toes excessive, incorporates a chair with a gap within the seat, a cage beneath, and a hook. The Hammer coat of arms—the identical one which, for years, adorned the outside of the headquarters—is painted on the seat. In a single photograph Michael sits atop the throne grinning whereas holding the top of a blonde lady, sitting within the cage and likewise smiling.

Out of this household background of cash, abuses of energy, and alleged sexual sadism got here Armie Hammer, a person of unattainable peak and Ken doll-esque handsomeness, with the boldness and charisma specific to these born wealthy and exquisite. And Armie Hammer was going to be a film star.

It took Armie Hammer some time to make it in Hollywood. And when he lastly did, it was messy.

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Hammer’s breakout position got here in 2010’s The Social Community, during which he performed towards himself because the Winklevoss twins. That position would set up Hammer’s kind: the wealthy and good-looking asshole, the scion of WASP masculinity. However as detailed by Anne Helen Petersen in her 2017 BuzzFeed Information article “Ten Lengthy Years of Making an attempt to Make Armie Hammer Occur,” it wouldn’t be till his position in 2018’s Name Me by Your Identify, during which he performs the good-looking American grad pupil who woos the younger European Timothée Chalamet, that Hammer would attain authentic stardom. And when speaking in regards to the lengthy holding sample of his profession, Hammer tends responsible unhealthy luck, unhealthy timing, and a nasty system.

“Armie Hammer didn’t occur for 10 lengthy years as a result of, in keeping with his logic, the system was stacked towards him,” Petersen wrote in 2017. “Nicely, after all it was: The ‘system,’ whether or not Hollywood or American capitalism usually, is stacked towards principally everybody. However a small few, together with Hammer’s personal grandfather, work out easy methods to manipulate and survive it. What appears to harass Hammer, then, is that he struggled the identical means everybody else — the best way ladies and actors of shade particularly — battle: with shitty choices, with publicity that pigeonholes you, with individuals who solely care about your appears, with machinations past your management.”

“Your perspective is bitter AF,” Hammer tweeted in response. His followers rose up after him, filling Petersen’s mentions with indignant defenses of their fave.

Hammer’s response was uncommon. Petersen, who holds a PhD in media research, on the time specialised in analysis-heavy celeb deconstructions: monitoring a star’s profession trajectory and taking it aside to see the way it labored. (Petersen is now, amongst different issues, an everyday contributor to Vox.) Her Armie Hammer article was crucial of the Hollywood system that afforded Hammer limitless additional possibilities due to his wealth and his good-looking white masculinity, however it wasn’t significantly crucial of Hammer himself. Most stars wouldn’t have responded to an article as even-handed as Petersen’s so publicly.

However even then, at arguably the height of his profession, Armie Hammer had a repute for getting a bit messy on social media. In 2017, he preferred a collection of rope bondage tweets from his public account. In 2019, he posted a video to Instagram of his toddler sucking his toes and tagged it #footfetishonfleek. It was nothing too outré, however it was all arguably a bit bit bizarre.

In June 2020, Hammer introduced he was divorcing his spouse of 10 years, the mannequin Elizabeth Chambers. After which, in January 2021, the Armie Hammer social media intercourse stuff broke vast open.

At first, the Armie Hammer rumors appeared like they have been simply embarrassing kink tales. Then the rumors obtained darker.

On January 10, 2021, an nameless Instagram account named Home of Effie, which has since been made personal, leaked what gave the impression to be DMs and audio conversations with Hammer. In these DMs, Hammer seems to debate a fetish for cannibalism, blood-drinking, and violent and dominating intercourse. Different ladies got here ahead on Instagram to share comparable experiences with Hammer. (Home of Effie shares a reputation with the Effie who accused Hammer of rape. Effie’s lawyer Gloria Allred has declined to substantiate or deny if they’re one and the identical.)

The primary wave of response to the leaks, primed partially by years of plenty of individuals understanding that Armie Hammer posts his bizarre intercourse stuff on fundamental, will be finest summarized as “lol, cannibalism.” It was a scandalized and tittering response to studying about an embarrassing celeb kink.

However it progressively turned clear that girls weren’t talking out about Hammer to kink-shame him. And what they have been describing didn’t sound in any respect like a totally consensual and innocent exploration of kink with a prepared associate. In truth, it was beginning to sound like one particular person exploring violent fetishes with a number of different individuals who weren’t into the thought or consenting, and going forward and doing so anyway regardless of their misgivings.

“Do you assume Armie is definitely harmful or is all of it simply kink stuff?” requested an onlooker.

“‘Kink stuff’ doesn’t embrace homicide fantasies, or harmful knife video games (like a knife between your legs throughout intercourse) or cannibalistic fantasies,” replied one among Hammer’s accusers in a now-deleted Instagram submit.

The gossip web site Deux Moi posted unconfirmed claims that Hammer had a gaggle chat with mates the place he would share movies of his encounters along with his companions with out their consent, and that he routinely pushed boundaries, disregarded protected phrases, and made threats. Ladies who stated they’d been in sexual relationships with Hammer posted comparable accounts anonymously to social media, alleging that Hammer pushed them to take part in sexual actions that made them uncomfortable, and that they have been nonetheless recovering emotionally from the trauma.

A few of Hammer’s exes have been prepared to talk on the file. Courtney Vucekovich instructed Web page Six that she thought of her relationship with Hammer emotionally abusive. “He sucks out all of the goodness you may have left,” she stated. “That’s what he did to me. I gave and gave and gave till it damage.” Vucekovich stated that Hammer would textual content her as much as 100 occasions per day once they have been collectively, and that “He did some issues with me that I wasn’t comfy with.”

On January 13, the Day by day Mail printed a video of Hammer apparently ingesting and doing medication whereas driving. On the identical day, he dropped out of the Jennifer Lopez rom-com Shotgun Wedding ceremony, during which he was set to star.

“I’m not responding to those bullshit claims however in mild of the vicious and spurious on-line assaults towards me, I can’t in good conscience now go away my kids for 4 months to shoot a movie within the Dominican Republic. Lionsgate is supporting me on this and I’m grateful to them for that,” Hammer stated in an announcement.

However the scandal was simply starting. On January 15, tabloids printed what gave the impression to be Armie Hammer’s secret Instagram account. There, Hammer apparently posted movies of girls in lingerie, bondage memes, and what gave the impression to be a boast about dishonest on the drug check he was required to take earlier than seeing his kids after his divorce from Chambers.

“All adverse, bitches,” he allegedly wrote within the drug check submit. “My physique is a finely tuned toxicant processing unit. To be honest I had THC and benzos in my piss. However who doesn’t.”

“Divorce is so enjoyable. Not as enjoyable as medication. However what’s.”

On January 28, Hammer introduced that he was exiting the forthcoming Paramount+ collection The Provide, in regards to the making of The Godfather, during which he had been set to star. On February 5, the Hollywood Reporter discovered that Hammer had been dropped by his company, WME, and by his publicist.

Armie Hammer’s profession was formally in free fall.

Effie is accusing Hammer of emotional and bodily abuse, together with sexual assault

Courtesy of Gloria Allred

Effie’s accusations towards Hammer are essentially the most severe by far of all of the tales swirling round him. She is the one lady on the file accusing Hammer of rape.

In a press convention shortly after making her accusation, Effie stated that she first met Hammer on Fb in 2016, when she was 20, and that they have been concerned intermittently for 4 years. She stated they have been final involved in 2020.

“I fell in love with him immediately,” Effie stated in a ready assertion. “Trying again, it’s now clear to me he was using manipulation techniques as a way to exert management over me, till I began to lose myself. He would typically check my devotion to him, slyly eradicating and crossing my boundaries, as he turned more and more extra violent. He abused me mentally, emotionally, and sexually.”

Finally, Effie stated, the violence turned rape. “On April 24, 2017, Armie Hammer violently raped me for over 4 hours in Los Angeles,” she instructed reporters, “throughout which he repeatedly slapped my head towards a wall, bruising my face. He additionally dedicated different acts of violence towards me to which I didn’t consent.”

Effie stated that along with the alleged rape, Hammer beat her toes with a crop “so they might damage for the following week” with each step she took. She says she tried to get away, “however he wouldn’t let me.”

“I believed that he was going to kill me,” she stated.

She added that the trauma she suffered after her relationship with Hammer ended was so intense that she thought of taking her personal life.

The LAPD investigation towards Hammer ended with out fees, with TMZ reporting that the case “isn’t sturdy.” As an alternative, Hammer’s case appears more likely to play out within the courtroom of public opinion, the place temporary stints within the Cayman Islands serve dubiously instead of jail sentences. Home of Hammer is about to be the newest piece of proof entered into that courtroom.

Replace, August 25, 2022: This story, initially printed on March 19, 2021, has been up to date all through with new info, together with the result of the LAPD investigation, developments in Hammer’s private life, and information of the Home of Hammer documentary.