Armie Hammer Reflects on Cannibal Scandal: ‘Subconsciously, I Wanted to Get Caught’
Armie Hammer started the new year by reflecting on the scandal that derailed his acting career. Hammer appeared on Christina Pazsitzy and Tom Segura’s podcast Your Mom’s House to discuss how he was shunned by Hollywood after a woman accused him of rape and several others revealed cannibalistic fantasies he had shared with them.
During the interview, Hammer claimed that the timing of the scandal made it seems more consequential than it was. “The world seemed like it was falling apart, and people were just deeply unhappy with their own lives,” he said of the story, which broke during Covid. “And then this salacious story comes around where this actor wants to murder and eat people. And all of a sudden, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, this is so much more fun to focus on than the fact that I can’t leave my living room.’ And then stories kept coming out and kept coming out and kept coming out.”
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Hammer also said several of his exchanges with women were taken out of context, although he acknowledged that he does have sexual fantasies about tying women up.
“I like the idea that you are so completely mine,” Hammer noted. “Yeah. I can do whatever I want, and you love it because you know you’re mine. And, like, this possession kinda thing, like, that’s just fun to talk about. And, by the way, especially if you’re, like, drunk or stoned or high at night and you’re texting. And while you’re saying it, you’re, like, chuckling to yourself, like, ‘I’m gonna fucking cut your toe off and keep it in my pocket so I got a piece of you everywhere I go,’ ha ha ha.”
He added, “If anyone took anyone’s bedroom conversations — specifically, like, if people were having a little bit of sexy time — and they took the shit that they said, even if it was completely vanilla, and you read that somewhere else out of context, everyone’s gonna go, ‘You guys are fucking disgusting.'”
At the time, Hammer said he was “in full panic mode” because everyone began turning against him in the press and the public. “I mean, to get a little bit serious here, there was this sort of, like, there was the mask that I didn’t really identify with, but everyone thought was me, that that became sort of like my safety net and identity,” he told the podcast hosts. “And then when that gets shattered and everyone goes, ‘We no longer like this guy. We fucking hate him.’ Which is rough.”
He continued, “I mean, dude, there would be articles in, like, The Punjabi Times about how I was a cannibal and all that stuff. And I think in March of 2021, like, I was the, like, fifth most-searched person on Google in the world. And all of it was negative. You’re just left standing there naked in front of the world with all of your proclivities or kinks being judged by the world. That shit is tough.”
During the interview, Hammer confirmed that he has been considering his actions. “There are aspects of my behavior that I think were coming from maybe not the healthiest place,” he said. “Then there were aspects of my behavior that were just expressions of my own sexuality. So I had to sort of, like, comb through all of that and figure out what’s coming from the right place, what’s coming from a trauma place.” He added, “I think somewhere deep down, subconsciously, I wanted to get caught.”
Hammer recently announced his own podcast, which he said he is recording from his “tiny-ass apartment,” and will return to acting in Frontier Crucible, which he recently shot with William H. Macy. “I wouldn’t say I’m back,” he said. “[But] I’m working.” Hammer’s podcast, The Armie HammerTime Podcast, has been described as a forum where he “sits down with extraordinary people from all walks of life as he rebuilds his own.”
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