Armie Hammer calls cannibalism allegations 'the greatest thing to ever happen' to him

Armie Hammer has spoken out about his highly publicised cannibalism accusations in a new interview for The Louis Theroux Podcast, telling listeners that the scandal was the “the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”. The Social Network and Call Me By Your Name star was accused of cannibalism in January 2021, when screenshots that appeared to show Hammer sexting with a woman who was not his wife circulated around the internet.

The texts, which Hammer says are doctored to remove context, show Armie Hammer’s social media account telling a woman that he plans on “cutting [her] into pieces and f***ing the pieces” as well as asking: “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?” The texts also allege that he said: “I want you to bite yourself again. Think of me eating you.”.

Theroux raises another one of these texts with Hammer on the podcast, saying: “In January 2021 texts were released from the person you were pursuing the affair with. And these are the ones that went viral and became famous. One was from you saying, ‘I am 100 percent a cannibal. Fuck, that's scary to admit. I've never admitted that before. I've cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm.’ How would you like to contextualise that?”.

Hammer explains that the screenshots only portrayed “one side of the a conversation”. “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. It makes it look like I was just rambling to myself. I mean, if you look, there's really no response in any of the excerpts.”. The disgraced actor then tells Theroux that the texts are “digitally altered evidence” which would be “immediately inadmissible” in court because of the lack of context. “I'm not going to argue the messages,” he admits.

Louis Theroux then directly asks Armie Hammer if he is a cannibal, to which Hammer responds: “You know what you have to do to actually be a cannibal? You have to actually eat human flesh. So no.”. He continues: “Did I ever have any intention of cutting anything off of anyone or eating anything off of anyone? No. There was never really anything that I wanted. Was it fun to joke about if I was stoned or drunk or like laughing as I was typing these messages? Sure.”.

Hammer also tells Theroux that the animal heart story is true and that he took a bite out of an animal heart while hunting when he was younger. “[...] you don't eat the whole heart,” he says. “You take a bite out of the heart, and you've got all your buddies around you, they're goading you on, it's sort of like a, it's sort of like a almost overly charged male rite of passage when you go hunting for your first time.”.

The 38-year-old then insists this was “not for the purpose of any cannibalism or any sexual gratification.”. He also claims that his Hollywood career is back in full swing, telling Theroux: “I just finished a movie that we shot in Arizona called Frontier Crucible, and it's me and Thomas Jane and William H. Macy. Then I'm gonna go do another movie in January, and then I've got another movie in March. I've got a TV show that I was just offered. I've got offers coming in every week, basically, to the point where I'm having to turn down jobs.”.

Since the reputational downfall, Hammer spent a period selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands, which he called “the first desk job that I've ever had in my entire life.” “I was having the time of my life. I went to work every day, I enjoyed the people I was working with, I got to wear my little khaki pants and a polo shirt and sell timeshares. I loved it. Like, there's no shame in it for me. I loved it,” he said.

He also revealed that the online sleuthing around the allegations became so overwhelming that he was dragged into a murder investigation in Wonder Valley, California. “The sheriff has to come out and say, ‘He is not a suspect, he wasn’t even here when it happened, he’s not even a person of interest, please stop calling my sheriff’s department and telling me ‘Armie Hammer did it.’”. Reflecting on the downfall as a whole, Armie Hammer reflected: “It killed off all of the ego. It killed off all of the bulls***. It killed off all of the pretense. And I spent three years and change really having to examine myself and really having to look at myself and really having to go ‘woosh’ to all of the external validation that I was getting. Not only did it go away, it turned into global hate [...] Now, with a sense of distance and perspective from it, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”.