Director on Exposing Sexual Misconduct Allegations, Why Leto Has Not Been Held Accountable
A year after Jared Leto withstood sexual misconduct accusations in AirMail, there’s BBC new docu, Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.
Director Alice McShane (“Russell Brand: In Plain Sight”) teams up with the reporter behind the AirMail story, Elena Clavarino, and BBC producer Jessica Sartenaer to set out numerous allegations against Leto, the star of Hollywood movies including “Tron: Ares” and “Masters of the Universe” and frontman of rock band “30 Seconds to Mars”
How long have you been working on this?
We started in April ‘25. That’s when a post on Instagram by LA-based DJ called Allie Teilz accusing Leto of sexual misconduct
While you were working on this, AirMail published article in which nine women accused him of sexual misconduct
It just takes a huge amount of time to get a documentary to air. I was a bit like, “It’s a bit of a race against time.” But then the AirMail article was published and nine women’s accounts in that piece, and we really thought, “Wow, this is the story, you know, this is the moment.” It was just really surprising when not a huge amount seemed to happen [to Leto’s career] after that article went live.
When you felt that you had enough for the documentary
I think there’s always the appetite to build the strongest evidence base that you possibly can, because it’s so important that these documentaries have an impact, not least for the women that are involved. They are coming forward and facing this very scary prospect of going up against a very wealthy and powerful man like Jared Leto, and you want the documentary for them to do its job and to hopefully get some accountability on their behalf. So that’s one of the main drivers for really gathering a strong evidence base. But also legally, of course it’s risky for the BBC to do a film like this so on that side of things as well, they really want to see that these cases are strong, and that they’re very deeply corroborated.
llustrating the stories as you’re filming, or is it something you look at after gathering the testimonies?
To really bring the women’s stories to life, you have to do some level of reconstruction. I wanted to give that extra visual aid to help immerse [the viewer] in the story, so you’re really writing down all of the beats, exactly what they’re saying, and you’re just thinking of ways to bring that to life.
Isabel [not her real name] was assaulted in motel in 2002 and we did we did a narrative piece of recon with her. All the women in the recon are played by me and Jess in a selection of wigs: there was no budget for actors so you really are having to be resourceful. Obviously, you have to okay that with contributor because it can be quite confronting watching recon of your story. But we wanted to bring that kind of dingy, gross motel to life and give that sense of what must it have felt like when she was walking into that bathroom.
Budget?
I have no idea, but I could tell you that it’s an absolute fraction of what a Netflix budget might be.
This docu is coming out now because Leto is no longer in position of power, after his last few films flopped
To me it’s completely irrelevant whether he’s “box office poison” or not. He’s still incredibly famous. The point we make in the film is that despite the allegations that were put forward in the AirMail article, he’s still been in two major movies [since]. I know some of his films have flopped. That doesn’t make any difference. The BBC current affairs department, we’re not Hollywood.… we are journalists. We’re there to hold power to account, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
“Russell Brand: In Plain Sight”
I think the things that helped make the Brand documentary such a success — first, the incredible contributors, of course, that is always absolutely paramount. Second, the archive. It can be so chilling to position a woman’s story next to a piece of relevant archive, when you hear from the man in question, and there was a lot of that that was available with Leto as well. So I knew from the beginning when I took the job on that there would be scope to use archive in a similar way, so that’s another thing I brought from the Brand film.
Finally, the thing that really captured the imagination, certainly of the British public, was exposing the enabling of the U.K. broadcasters … I thought that was really important, and that was absolutely central to the story, alongside awful accounts of abuse by Brand. There are similarities in the Leto docu. They’re completely different men with a completely different allegations.
But there is certainly consistencies with the narcissism and being driven by power and control.
Brand is facing criminal charges, so there’s accountability
There’s something about our culture at the moment — I think there’s something that I feel might be happening 10 years on from #MeToo. It just feels like the outrage about stories like this has slightly cooled, and I think that also with the rise of the manosphere, and also people in very significant positions of power having had allegations leveled at them as well about their treatment of women, I think that in a way, these sorts of stories have been normalized in people’s minds, and I just don’t think that they get the traction perhaps that they would have done 10 years ago. So I think that’s part of it. I also think with Leto, he’s cultivated this persona of this kind of weird, enigmatic, mysterious guy, and I think, in a way, that sort of shielded him from accountability.
He’s also incredibly good-looking man, and there is element of “pretty” privilege, and that actually came through in the interviews with the women.
He also looks youthful, given that he’s now 54…
At one point I was thinking we should [show] stills of him each time we had card that said “Leto was 34 at the time” but if you put a picture of him up, he looks about 15, so I don’t think it really landed the point of how old he was.
Engaging with Leto’s reps when you gave him right of reply?
We gathered all the evidence, we put together the right of reply letter, which is a very lengthy document where we lay out in detail all of the women’s stories that we intend to include. Usually in a current affairs film you give two weeks…so we sent it out on July 3, expecting it to be back on July 17. Our executive producer Mike Radford, he sent it directly to Leto via email and asked for confirmation of receipt, which didn’t come — and it didn’t come and it didn’t come.
And it was really radio silence across the board. It was quite strange. And then the deadline came, and still nothing. I have never experienced that before, where you just had absolutely nothing back.
I’d find it very hard to believe that he didn’t [get the letter]. We called him, we texted him.
Leto eventually issued denial to the press via his reps late Thursday, U.K. time.
As yet, we still have not directly had a response to the allegations that we put to him. So who knows what’s going to happen? We may get a letter. We may never get a letter. He may take us to court. He may not take us to court. But whatever eventuality that comes, we are prepared.
