Armie Hammer has denied allegations he’s a cannibal and claimed the messages sent to his former partner detailing otherwise were taken out of context.
The Call Me by Your Name star, 37, first became the centre of a social media scandal in 2021 after messages allegedly sent from him detailed graphic sexual desires and cannibalistic fetishes.
Hammer said that the controversy was “the greatest thing that ever happened to him” and argued the messages where he admitted to being “100 percent a cannibal” were a joke.
Speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Hammer said: “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.”
He continued: “That could have been a very funny conversation between two people who were joking and pushing each other and egging each other on.”
When asked by Theroux whether he was in fact a cannibal, Hammer responded: “You know what you have to do to actually be a cannibal? You have to actually eat human flesh. So no.”
The actor continued: “Sometimes when you're involved with a person and you're dating and 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.”
One message allegedly sent by Hammer to a former girlfriend reads: “ I will own you. That’s my soul. My brain. My spirit. My body. Would you come and be my property till you die? If I wanted to cut off one of your toes and keep it with me in my pocket so I always had a piece of you in my possession?”
Hammer claimed he never had “any intention of cutting anything off of anyone or eating anything off of anyone”.
“There was never really anything that I wanted,” he claimed. “Was it fun to joke about if I was stoned or drunk or like laughing as I was typing these messages? Sure. That's where context comes in.”
In the messages allegedly sent by Hammer to his former partner, the actor also wrote that he had cut out the heart of an animal and eaten it while it was still warm.
When asked about the claim by Theroux, Hammer said there’s a hunting ritual where “you’ve got all your buddies around you, they’re goading you on, sort of like an overly charged male rite of passage” to eat the heart.
“Everyone that I know who went hunting for their first time had to do something similar,” he explained, denying that he had ever performed the ritual “for the purpose of cannibalism or any sexual gratification”.
Hammer was accused of rape and abuse by various women, but has consistently denied any criminal wrongdoing and was not charged sexual assault after an investigation.
Reflecting on his past behaviour towards women, the actor said: “I'm very quick to admit that I was selfish, and inconsiderate, and an asshole, and a cad, and I used people to make me feel better.
“People were sort of like my bags of dope with skin on them,” he added.
“You make me feel amazing, so I'm gonna throw everything into this and we're gonna have this whirlwind romance and I'm gonna whisk you up and we're gonna go on trips and we're gonna do all this and then I'm gonna bring you home and I'm gonna go, thanks so much that was great, and then I'm gonna move on.”
He reflected: “Does it make me a d***? Absolutely. I have no problem admitting that. I was a d***. That's not illegal. You know?”
Hammer, who revealed he’s currently still single, said the controversy “killed off all the ego” and forced him to spend three years “really having to examine myself and “learning to love myself”.
“Now, with a sense of distance and perspective from it, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” he claimed.
