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

On September 2, 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 function within the 2018 movie Name Me By Your Title, 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 response to Selection, he’s now reported to be again in LA.

But Effie’s accusations have been solely the fruits of a number of months of cloudy rumors and scandal swirling round Hammer, rumors that in the first place seemed to be extra entertaining nonsense than career-ending and doubtlessly prison accusations. When an anonymously run Instagram account first started to leak what seemed 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 informal observer may simply conclude that Hammer was coping with a low-stakes case of innocent and juicy movie star gossip.

However as time went on, and girls 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 rather more critical habits 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 Demise on the Nile, prone to be his closing 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 you’ll want to know to grasp the Armie Hammer story, and the downfall of one among Hollywood’s hottest film stars.

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

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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 concerning the identify. That’s the type 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 “explicit assist” 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 most 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 girls and together with his kids have been reportedly very disagreeable. Miller chronicles how Armand pushed his lover of over 10 years to legally change her identify; put on wigs, glasses, and make-up to vary 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 care for her after he died. As an alternative, he left her out of his will.

Armand would equally go over his son Julian — Armie’s grandfather — and as an alternative depart 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 fees have been dropped. His daughter Casey, Armie’s aunt, has additionally accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a baby 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 greatest pursuits are partying and pretty kinky intercourse. Maybe probably 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 presents despatched by associates”:

The construction, about seven ft excessive, contains 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 pinnacle of a blonde girl, 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 unimaginable top and Ken doll-esque handsomeness, with the boldness and charisma explicit to these born wealthy and delightful. 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 function got here in 2010’s The Social Community, wherein he performed in opposition to himself because the Winklevoss twins. That function 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 Attempting to Make Armie Hammer Occur,” it wouldn’t be till his function in 2018’s Name Me by Your Title, wherein he performs the good-looking American grad pupil who woos the younger European Timothée Chalamet, that Hammer would attain authentic stardom. And when speaking concerning the lengthy holding sample of his profession, Hammer tends accountable unhealthy luck, unhealthy timing, and a foul system.

“Armie Hammer didn’t occur for 10 lengthy years as a result of, in response to his logic, the system was stacked in opposition to him,” Petersen wrote in 2017. “Effectively, after all it was: The ‘system,’ whether or not Hollywood or American capitalism generally, is stacked in opposition to mainly everybody. However a small few, together with Hammer’s personal grandfather, determine 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 girls and actors of colour particularly — wrestle: 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 movie star deconstructions: monitoring a star’s profession trajectory and taking it aside to see the way it labored. (Petersen is now, amongst different issues, a daily contributor to Vox.) Her Armie Hammer article was crucial of the Hollywood system that afforded Hammer limitless further 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 little bit messy on social media. In 2017, he favored 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 little 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 extensive open.

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

On January 10, 2021, an nameless Instagram account named Home of Effie, which has since been made personal, leaked what seemed 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 girls got here ahead on Instagram to share related 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 partly by years of a number of individuals realizing that Armie Hammer posts his bizarre intercourse stuff on important, could be greatest summarized as “lol, cannibalism.” It was a scandalized and tittering response to studying about an embarrassing movie star 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 accomplice. The truth is, it was beginning to sound like one individual 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 website Deux Moi posted unconfirmed claims that Hammer had a bunch chat with associates the place he would share movies of his encounters together 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 related 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 report. Courtney Vucekovich instructed Web page Six that she thought of her relationship with Hammer emotionally abusive. “He sucks out all of the goodness you’ve got 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 after they have been collectively, and that “He did some issues with me that I wasn’t comfy with.”

On January 13, the Each 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 Marriage ceremony, wherein he was set to star.

“I’m not responding to those bullshit claims however in gentle of the vicious and spurious on-line assaults in opposition to me, I can’t in good conscience now depart 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 a press release.

However the scandal was simply starting. On January 15, tabloids printed what seemed to be Armie Hammer’s secret Instagram account. There, Hammer apparently posted movies of girls in lingerie, bondage memes, and what seemed 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 detrimental, bitches,” he allegedly wrote within the drug check submit. “My physique is a finely tuned toxicant processing unit. To be truthful 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 Supply, concerning the making of The Godfather, wherein 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 in opposition to Hammer are probably the most critical by far of all of the tales swirling round him. She is the one girl on the report 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 in touch 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 with the intention 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 in opposition to a wall, bruising my face. He additionally dedicated different acts of violence in opposition to me to which I didn’t consent.”

Effie stated that along with the alleged rape, Hammer beat her ft with a crop “so they’d 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 in opposition to Hammer ended with out fees, with TMZ reporting that the case “isn’t sturdy.” As an alternative, Hammer’s case appears prone to play out within the court docket of public opinion, the place transient 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 court docket.

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 end result of the LAPD investigation, developments in Hammer’s private life, and information of the Home of Hammer documentary.