Katherine Ryan feels ‘grief and relief’ as Russell Brand awaits sentencing on Monday

Comedian Katherine Ryan has described a mix of “grief and relief” after Russell Brand was convicted of rape and sexual assault, saying the verdict stirred up difficult emotions for many women who have been reacting privately and quietly. Brand, 51, will be sentenced on Monday.

Ryan spoke on her podcast, Telling Everybody Everything, after a jury at Southwark Crown Court found Brand guilty on Thursday of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was cleared of two further rape charges and one other allegation of indecent assault. Brand denied all allegations of non-consensual sexual activity. The trial judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, told him to expect “a significant custodial term”.

Why Ryan says the verdict brings grief and relief

Ryan said the outcome left her “dysregulated again, caught off-guard, emotional”, and “in awe of the survivors who also had nothing to gain”. She noted that the women came forward even though Brand had “fame, power, money, and a legion of fans ready to attack them”.

She was careful about how she framed her reaction. “I will never be someone who, like, dances on graves,” she said. “There has been some justice done today. There’s a level of relief, but there’s grief alongside relief.” She stressed that the court’s finding does not undo the harm, and that people who were hurt “will continue to carry that in some way, regardless of what justice is done.”

She also voiced a worry about what comes next. Brand, she said, has spent a long time cultivating the idea that the establishment invented the claims against him, and has cast himself as a martyr to a growing audience who still see the women as the villains.

The Roast Battle backstory

Ryan’s comments carry extra weight because of her earlier remarks. In 2022 she told Louis Theroux in a BBC interview that she had called a famous man a “predator” to his face while working on a TV programme, but could not name him because it was a “litigious minefield”. Speculation has long linked this to Comedy Central’s Roast Battle in 2018. The BBC and Variety both note that Ryan has not publicly confirmed that she meant Brand or named the show.

Deadline, however, reported in 2023 that she repeatedly called Brand a “sexual predator” while recording the series. It said her jokes did not make the final edit, and that Brand was later replaced on the show by Jonathan Ross. In a stand-up special last year, Ryan recounted being told that Brand had objected and wanted her to stop teasing him. She said she then had to “be nice” after the channel stepped in. The sources differ on how directly she has linked herself to the story, so those accounts are best read as reported claims rather than something she has confirmed in her podcast remarks.

Questions for the industry

The verdict has also prompted scrutiny of the people around Brand. Former BBC One controller Lorraine Heggessey asked on BBC Radio 5 Live how and why he was able to “get away with it so long”. She asked why nobody intervened and why senior executives who worked with him did not “call time”. Her own answer was that many were “partly mesmerised”: he seemed “cool” for a while, had charisma and brought in a young audience that broadcasters crave. As others have said, she added, “he did hide in plain sight.”

Adventurer Bear Grylls, who attended Brand’s baptism in the River Thames in 2024, also responded. He said the faith had seemed genuine at the time and that he would not want to discourage anyone from coming to faith. He added that “judgement is for the courts and God”, that it was right “justice has now been served”, and that the victims were “the heroes of the day”.

What happens next

The legal story is not over. The Metropolitan Police said Brand is being investigated over further rape allegations made by two women, and that he had previously been interviewed under caution about them. He has not been convicted of anything in relation to those allegations. He had earlier tried and failed to have the criminal case thrown out, arguing that publicity following a 2023 Channel 4 Dispatches, Times and Sunday Times investigation made a fair trial impossible. He denied the claims in that investigation, and none of the women featured in it were complainants in this trial.

For now, attention turns to Monday’s sentencing. Ryan’s reaction, a refusal to celebrate alongside an acknowledgment that something real has been established in court, reflects how many people are processing a verdict that brings both accountability and a reminder of the harm behind it. That balance of grief and relief is likely to shape the conversation long after the sentence is handed down.

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File photo: Katherine Ryan, Scoundrels, 2012(cropped).jpg by Paul Beavan from Andover, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.