As another year passes, a whole new batch of British entertainment scandals is immortalized in The Hollywood Reporter‘s overview of a controversial 2025.
Elsewhere around the globe, we’ve witnessed an almighty It Ends With Us legal battle between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, Sydney Sweeney had some work to do re-patching her reputation after that American Eagle ad, and Australia mourned the breakdown of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s marriage.
And while the U.K. has continued to punch above its weight across film, TV and music, sadly, that also extends to some of the outrage-prompting disasters that made headlines this year. More J.K. Rowling rows, the no-longer-prince Andrew and a revengeful Lily Allen: They’re all in the mix, as well as harassment and misconduct claims that, rather depressingly, also speckled our 2024 roundup.
Below, The Hollywood Reporter lists the year’s top entertainment scandals in Britain, in chronological order — from that Glastonbury backlash to the multi-billion-dollar Donald Trump lawsuits (and yes, it was another bad year for the BBC).
The Russell Brand Saga Continues
In May, Russell Brand appeared at a London court after being charged with rape, and indecent and sexual assault. He pleaded not guilty to all five charges.
The disgraced comedian’s first hearing had taken place earlier in the month after it was confirmed the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service had authorized the Metropolitan Police to charge a man, identified as 50-year-old Brand, following an investigation.
Brand, who has consistently denied the allegations brought against him, was charged with one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape and two counts of sexual assault. He now faces a trial that is scheduled to start June 3, 2026, and just earlier this month was charged with additional counts of sexual assault, meaning he faces criminal allegations of sex crimes against six women.
You’ll recall that this news story dates back to 2023, when detectives began investigating Brand after receiving a number of allegations following reporting by Channel 4’s Dispatches and The Sunday Times.
A Politically Charged Glastonbury Festival
The Israel-Gaza war loomed over the U.K.’s biggest music festival in June. Irish rap trio Kneecap shocked as expected at their raucous West Holts Stage set. The group has drawn widespread criticism — including from Britain’s top politicians, such as culture secretary Lisa Nandy — for their vocal pro-Palestine messaging. “The amount of Palestinian flags I can see is insane,” Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (A.K.A. Mo Chara) said during the set. “The BBC editor is going to have some job,” he added. (Ó hAnnaidh was also charged with a terror offense this year for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at an earlier gig, but the case was later thrown out.)
Glastonbury’s official media partner, the BBC, broadcasts each set and came under fire for allowing a particularly controversial music act to continue live streaming. The relatively unknown duo Bob Vylan led chants of “death, death, death to the IDF” during their performance, which was swiftly branded anti-semitic. Glastonbury condemned the chant, the band was dropped by its agency, UTA, and the U.S. State Department revoked the band members’ visas, forcing them to cancel their planned tour of North America.
“We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs, or any other race or group of people,” the act wrote in a post on Instagram after the uproar. “We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine — a machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.”
The BBC later admitted it broke its own editorial guidelines by live broadcasting Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury performance, though the U.K. public broadcaster’s Executive Complaints Unit stopped short of calling the broadcast an incitement or a violation of impartiality rules. “If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes, I would do it again,” Bob Vylan band member Bobby Vylan told The Louis Theroux Pocast recently. “I’m not regretful of it. I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays. I’m not regretful of it at all.”
More MasterChef Mess
U.K. MasterChef presenters and TV chefs Gregg Wallace and John Torode were officially sacked by the BBC in July after a Banijay-commissioned report maintained allegations of inappropriate behavior on the set of the popular cooking show.
The BBC cut ties with Wallace when it emerged that 45 separate claims against him were upheld, the majority of them relating to inappropriate sexual language and humor but also culturally insensitive and racist comments over a 19-year period. Wallace has since apologized, but insisted he is “not a groper.”
Torode was let go after the report stated that another individual was claimed to have made a racist remark. The Australian star later wrote on social media: “For the sake of transparency, I confirm that I am the individual who is alleged to have used racial language on one occasion,” adding that he has “no recollection of it.” This was the only claim upheld against Torode, who faced eight in total, including allegations of abusive and sexual language.
The British broadcaster moved forward with the decision to air the latest season of U.K. MasterChef in August, filmed before the duo were fired.
J.K. Rowling Slams “Ignorant” Emma Watson
Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling hit out at Emma Watson in a lengthy statement on X in September, telling users: “She has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is.”
Watson, who famously played Hermione Granger in the film adaptations of Rowling’s books, starred on a podcast interview with Jay Shetty this year where she voiced her “deepest wish” that she be permitted to separate her relationship with the author from their opposing views on trans rights.
Rowling, a staunch advocate for anti-trans policies in the U.K., has regularly come under fire for her transphobia. She has often been publicly criticized over her politics in recent years, notably by the main trio of Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, who have expressed support for the trans community.
Some were surprised to see Watson make some more neutral comments at the time. But Rowling swiftly took to X and said: “I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days. Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn’t want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.”
“However,” she continued, “Emma and Dan [Radcliffe] in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right — nay, obligation — to critique me and my views in public.” She said the pair have continued to “assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created,” years after Harry Potter drew to a close.
Later on in the post, Rowling also said Watson “has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is […] I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen,” she continued. “I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous.” Watson never responded to the fiery post.
BBC Gaza Doc Consequences
More trouble for the BBC. An investigation from British media regulator Ofcom found that the BBC’s documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone broke broadcasting rules for being “materially misleading” to audiences.
Ofcom released its findings — described as a “serious breach” of Ofcom rules — in October, and demanded the BBC broadcast a live statement on the investigation results.
The public broadcaster initially came under fire in February when one of the 13-year-old subjects in the film about the Israel-Gaza war, a young boy named Abdullah Al-Yazouri, was found to be the son of Hamas’ deputy minister of agriculture. The BBC pulled the doc from its streaming service, BBC iPlayer, and apologized for the “unacceptable flaws” in airing the program.
Ofcom said in a statement that the program’s failure to disclose the narrator’s father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading. “It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.” The BBC apologized and accepted Ofcom’s decision in full.
Prince-Less Andrew
It royally kicked off in October when King Charles made public his decision to strip his disgraced brother, the then-Prince Andrew, of his remaining titles and evict him from his royal residence after weeks of pressure to act over Andrew’s relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Buckingham Palace said at the time that the king had “initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew.” Andrew is now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and not as a prince, and was ordered to move from his Royal Lodge residence into “private accommodation.”
“These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” the palace said. “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”
Andrew, who has continuously denied all claims against him, faced a new round of public opprobrium after emails emerged earlier in the month showing he had remained in contact with Epstein longer than he previously admitted. That news was followed by the publication of a posthumous memoir by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she had sex with Andrew when she was 17.
None of this was helped by the Amazon and Netflix recreations of his infamous BBC Newsnight interview with journalist Emily Maitlis, titled A Very Royal Scandal and Scoop, respectively.
Lily Allen Drops Explosive Album
Also in October, British singer-songwriter Lily Allen blew up the Internet when she dropped a pretty damning new album, West End Girl, which goes into depth about her relationship with Stranger Things‘ David Harbour and his alleged infidelity.
Among other lyrics, Allen sings about discovering a “Pussy Palace” with “sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside” during her open relationship, and a woman named “Madeline” who seemingly established a stronger connection with her partner than Allen was comfortable with. She and Harbour separated after four years of marriage in February.
“I wrote this record in 10 days in December, and I feel very differently about the whole situation now,” Allen said about the music. “We all go through breakups and it’s always fucking brutal. But I don’t think it’s that often that you feel inclined to write about it while you’re in it.”
Fresh Spacey Claims
Kevin Spacey will face three more civil claims of sexual assault in London next year, it was confirmed last month.
BBC News reported that the claims have come from three separate men, who allege the House of Cards star assaulted them between 2000 and 2013. A judge suggested a provisional trial date of Oct. 12, 2026, though it remains undecided whether they’ll be heard in a single trial or three consecutive ones.
The Oscar-winning actor, who from 2004 to 2013 was the artistic director of the Old Vic, has vehemently rejected the claims made against him and formally denied two out of the three made in November. He has yet to file a defense with the court in the third.
One of the men alleges Spacey “deliberately assaulted” him on 12 occasions between 2000 and 2005, while another says he “suffered psychiatric damage and financial loss” after an assault in 2008. This man originally sued Spacey in 2022, but his case was halted when criminal charges were brought against the Hollywood actor. A London trial in July 2023 saw the actor acquitted of nine sexual offense charges.
Supacell Star Admits Involvement in Hit-and-Run
Ghetts, rapper and star of hit Netflix show Supacell, appeared in a London court in December and admitted to killing a young man in a hit-and-run.
The British rapper, whose real name is Justin Clarke-Samuel, was charged with causing death by dangerous driving after allegedly failing to stop his car when it hit 20-year-old Yubin Tamang in east London on Oct. 18, 2025.
The BBC said that the award-winning musician also faces two further charges: driving while over the legal alcohol limit and dangerous driving. He’s due to be sentenced on Feb. 12, 2026.
An Edited Trump Speech Blows Up the BBC
In mid-December, Donald Trump decided to sue the BBC for $10 billion over an edited speech.
The 33-page legal action, brought in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida, alleges the BBC made “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious depiction of President Trump, which was published in a BBC Panorama documentary, that was fabricated and aired by the defendants one week before the 2024 presidential election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The lawsuit claims the documentary was doctored to make it appear Trump, during his Jan. 6, 2021, speech outside the White House, had urged his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol. The legal action was preceded by a leaked memo written by a man named Michael Prescott, who said the Panorama doc took a decidedly “anti-Trump stance.” The document’s publication led to the resignations of BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News and Current Affairs boss Deborah Turness. (THR took a look at just how the crisis unfolded and the political ramifications of Trump’s attack here.)
A BBC representative told The Hollywood Reporter in December: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case. We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
Eventful might just be an understatement, but THR will be ready for whatever 2026 has in store — Happy New Year!
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