Brandt Joel, a top agent at WME who represents the likes of Jason Momoa and Matthew McConaughey, has become embroiled in a bigotry storm at the company after sending, and then deleting, an incendiary text to a WhatsApp group in reaction to the killing of six Israeli hostages over the weekend.
On Sunday, Israel’s military said it has recovered the bodies of six hostages killed by Hamas militants in Gaza – including an Israeli-American captive.
In a group chat showing solidarity with Israel that contains WME employees, but that is not officially affiliated with the company, the news of the death of the hostages was being discussed after someone shared President Joe Biden’s official statement on the incident. In screenshots of the group chat obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, WME’s Nancy Josephson and Katie Slater remark on the tragedy of the killings. Joel then texted in response to the news, “Screw the left kill all.”
A source told THR that Joel deleted the message a few minutes later.
Joel, a senior partner at WME who also represents Idris Elba, Justin Timberlake and Mahershala Ali, had previously spent four years in the U.S. Navy and served in Iraq before becoming an agent.
A source tells THR that this isn’t the first time Joel has sent divisive messages in the group chat, and shared a previous text where Joel had said WME had been “weak” on clients who had spoken out about the ongoing war in Gaza. “We have been every department has clients we should have fired and we didn’t and it shows we are weak and we have tolerated abhorrent behavior,” Joel texted, although it is unclear which clients he is directly referring to and what behavior he deemed “abhorrent.”
Joel added, “This is all polyanna crap. Nobody took a stand on this chat that I’m aware of except Richard and addressed it. Thankfully there are very few outliers yet we have not fired one and it’s shameful.”
The bloody and brutal war in Gaza has created a great deal of tension in Hollywood, with controversy following those who have spoken out about the conflict. In October, a few weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack on Southern Israel when some 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken captive, CAA was engulfed in a firestorm after power agent Maha Dakhil posted comments on her personal Instagram. On Oct. 18, Dakhil reposted a statement from an account called Free Palestine that read, “You’re currently learning who supports genocide.” Dakhil added, “That’s the line for me.” She then posted a photo captioned, “What’s more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.”
Dakhil quickly apologized and stayed with the company, but was fired by her client Aaron Sorkin over the social media comments and in the immediate aftermath of the incident had to step down from her role as CAA’s co-head of motion pictures and resigned from the agency’s internal board. She has since regained a leadership role at the company.
In November, actress Melissa Barrera, a WME client, was fired from Scream VII after a series of social media posts about the situation in Gaza. “Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” she wrote in one post on Instagram stories. “Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity no water … People have learnt nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
Reports at the time suggested that WME was also considering dropping Barrera over her stance, but the actress told THR in a March cover story that she always felt supported by her reps. “It’s definitely hard, because I was just in such a cloudy state of mind, but I was very fortunate,” she said through tears as she recalled the turbulent moment. “I had a lot of support from the people around me: my team and specifically my publicists — they just carried me.”
