Armie Hammer joined Bill Maher on his “Club Random” podcast for a rare interview since a series of sexual misconduct and abuse allegations derailed his career.
The “Call Me by Your Name” and “The Social Network” star said he was grateful for the fallout because “had none of this gone on … my life would have kept going exactly as it was. And I know that that would ultimately only lead in one place, and that’s death.”
After sexual assault allegations surfaced against Hammer, the actor exited a number of film and television projects and was dropped by his publicist and agent at WME. The LAPD and L.A. District Attorney’s office investigated the claims in 2023 and brought no criminal charges against Hammer due to “insufficient evidence.” Hammer denies the allegations and holds that his often “intense” sexual relationships with the accusers were consensual.
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When asked if he viewed the allegations, many of which were detailed in the 2022 Discovery+ docuseries “House of Hammer,” as a “blessing in disguise,” Hammer said, “1,000,000%. Yeah.”
“I experienced an ego death, a career death, financial death, all of these things. … You’ve got to die. And once you die, you can then be reborn,” Hammer said.
Becoming a pariah due to the allegations was “incredibly liberating,” he added, because previously Hammer was “preoccupied with how I was perceived, which now [I] don’t have to care about.”
“once everyone just decides that they hate you, you go, ‘Oh, well, then I don’t need anything from you people anyway,'” Hammer said.
Among the allegations against Hammer are that he engaged in cannibalism fantasies, coerced his partners into BDSM scenarios and carved his initial into a woman’s body. He denies all allegations of nonconsensual sexual conduct but said there is other “bad behavior” he admits to.
“I cheated on my wife. I used people to make me feel better. I was callous and inconsiderate with people and their emotions and their well-being. … And that is shitty behavior,” Hammer said. “There are things in my behavior that I have to take accountability for, right? Because that is pivotal for me, learning and growing from it.”
Addressing the LAPD investigation, Hammer said, “I was under the Sword of Damocles, legally speaking, for two and a half years. They went through phones, emails, eyewitness reports… they investigated me for two and a half years in a time where if they could have nailed someone like me, it would have been such a boon for the LAPD.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Hammer discussed selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands, which became tabloid fodder in 2022 after photos of the actor working at a hotel resort surfaced online.
“I loved it … it is so fun,” Hammer said of selling timeshares. Maher said that after he saw the photos of Hammer working at a hotel, he thought, “Fuck, this guy has balls,” to which Hammer replied, “That’s the wrong vowel — it’s ‘bills.’ I have two kids.”
When asked why he didn’t borrow from his oil family fortune, Hammer said, “It’s so complicated. I have come to the place where I understand that there are no free lunches. And anything that you take always has strings, especially from people who love to give because then they know they’ve got strings, right? So what I would rather do is I would rather go get a job selling timeshares. I’d rather go get a job.”
Hammer added, “I applied for a job to be a drama teacher. I applied for a job to be a landscaper. I applied for a job to be a building manager. And the Cayman Islands refuses to give me work permits.”
Watch Hammer’s full “Club Random” interview below.
