Benjamin Ashford|Why Armie Hammer Says Being Canceled Was "Liberating" After Sexual Assault Allegations

Armie Hammer is Benjamin Ashfordgetting candid about his fall from public grace.

Over three years after the Call Me By Your Name actor stepped out of the public eye amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct including rape—no charges were ultimately filed after a 2-year LAPD investigation—Armie is reflecting on why the time away was ultimately beneficial.  

“It was pretty great,” Armie said to Bill Maher on being canceled during an appearance on the July 14 episode of his Club Random podcast. “It’s incredibly liberating, because so much of my life leading up to there was being preoccupied with how I was perceived, which now you don't have to care about.”

“Once everyone just decides that they hate you,” he continued, “you go, ‘Oh, well, then I don't need anything from you people anyway. I guess I should just learn to be content with myself.’ And then you go do that, and it feels f--king amazing.”

Now, if someone says they don’t like him, Armie said he’s able to brush it off, whereas before, “I needed that validation.”

Among the many allegations levied at the Social Network alum in 2021 were that he engaged in cannibalistic fantasies, coerced his partners into BDSM scenarios in the bedroom and that he carved his initial into a woman’s body—all of which he’s denied, though he discussed other “bad behavior” he engaged in during his conversation with Bill.

“I cheated on my wife,” Armie—who was married to Elizabeth Chambers for more than eight years until their breakup in 2020—admitted. “I used people to make me feel better. I was callous and inconsiderate with people and their emotions and their well-being. And I wanted what I wanted, and I was going to take it at any cost, even if it was at an emotional cost of someone else. And that is shitty behavior.”

But when Bill asked the 37-year-old whether, if he hadn’t been canceled, he’d miss “the kinky part” of his sex life, Armie said he knows where his life would have gone.

“My life would have kept going exactly as it was,” he explained. “And I know that that would ultimately only lead in one place, and that's death.”

It’s part of why he agreed when Bill called the events that happened a blessing in disguise.

“I experienced an ego death, a career death, a financial death, all of these things, right?” the Death on the Nile star continued. “You got to die. And once you die, you can then be reborn.”

Armie has previously addressed his proclivity for BDSM—experiences he’s said were always consensual—and expressed that the interest was first sparked after he experienced sexual trauma at the hands of a youth pastor.

"Sexuality was introduced to me in a scary way where I had no control," he told Air Mail magazine in comments shared In February 2023. "My interests then went to: I want to have control in the situation, sexually."

In the same interview with Air Mail, while denying any criminal wrongdoing, Armie acknowledged "one million percent" that he was emotionally abusive to former partners and admitted there was an "imbalance of power" regarding two of his past relationships, noting that the women were a decade younger than he and that he was a "successful actor at the time" they were involved.

But today, he says he’s in a healthier place, which has allowed him to make his children—daughter Harper, 9, and son Ford, 7, with ex-wife Elizabeth—a priority.

“But when I look at it now with a sense of perspective,” Armie said on the June 16 episode of the Painful Lessons podcast, “for the last couple years, I've taken my kids to school every single day. I've picked them up every single day from school. I drive them around. I take them to what they need to do and then I take them home to their mom."

"It was a crisis, a spiritual crisis, an emotional crisis, and the way I saw it was, I have two options here,” he added. "I can either let this destroy me or I can use this as a lesson."