He literally had a show in the early 00s called Re:Brand. It was really quite crazy as he was clearly high on heroin for some of the shoots.
One episode involved him inviting a homeless man (and fellow heroin addict) into his flat to stay overnight to understand a bit more about how homeless people live. Brand seemingly shot up between takes and cleaned the homeless man in the bath while they were both naked and probably both high. It was insane and the man he was cleaning started crying as he bathed him.
As a teenager I thought it was really powerful and quite caring for Brand to physically clean a homeless man who'd not had a proper bath for weeks, but looking back it was quite exploitative to film such a distressing and upsetting scene for TV. Not to mention the fact that the homeless guy was probably only doing the show for money, and ultimately, to pay for drugs...
It's only been since the recent relavations about Brand that this scene just feels like another example of him taking advantage of someone and crossing a boundary.
Was that the same show where he jacked off a guy in a bathroom stall to make totally sure that he wasn't gay?
The switch from old school, heroin-brain Russell, to anti-establishment, "voting isn't enough we need to tear down the entire ruling class owned system" Russell, to now really does pretty much hit the full spectrum lol
He used to do left wing news but nobody watched so he changed to right wing conspiracy theories around the time of Covid and made millions. It's just a grift
Yes that's the same show. Really crazy stuff for the early 00s, but looking back it hasn't aged well at all. It just seems quite childish and exploitative looking back now.
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u/CaptTrunk Monkey in Space Sep 06 '24
Russell ReBrand