A little over a year since the Armie Hammer assault scandal broke out, the actor has been spotted selling timeshares for a resort in the Cayman Islands. It looks like the Call Me By Your Name star's acting days might be behind him as he allegedly settled for a normal job. Well, if you consider working as a timeshare salesperson at a dreamy resort in an equally dreamy location "normal".
In March 2021, several women, including an ex-girlfriend of Hammer, accused him of s*xual assault. The allegations came after Hammer's alleged s*xual texts to an unnamed woman — detailing his cannibalistic fantasies and his predilection for a BDSM practice called bloodplay — were made public in January. He firmly denied all claims.
Following the accusations, Hammer's career hit an obvious setback. His agency stopped representing him and his personal publicist stepped down from the role. As the actor was either dropped or walked away from several projects, he managed to keep his role on Kenneth Branagh's murder mystery Death on the Nile, unlike other stars accused of s*xual misconduct.
What Is The Armie Hammer Scandal All About?
In March 2021, Armie Hammer was named as the main suspect in a rape reported in February of the same year.
According to the accuser, known as Effie, the sexual violence took place in Los Angeles in 2017 when she was 20 and the actor was still married to his now ex-wife, TV personality Elizabeth Chambers.
Effie alleged Hammer had attacked her for four hours, during which he repeatedly physically harmed her in the context of an intimate relationship.
"He also committed other acts of violence against me to which I did not consent," she claimed during a press conference together with her lawyer Gloria Allred, saying that she was left fearing for her life.
In a statement from his lawyer, the interaction between Hammer and Effie, as well as those between the actor and other women, were said to be "consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory."
Effie filed a police report, leading to an LAPD investigation that concluded in December 2021. The case was then sent to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, but the actor might not face any charges.
Why Is Armie Hammer Still In Death On The Nile?
As a result of the allegations, the actor dropped out from several projects, including rom-com Shotgun Wedding with Jennifer Lopez (or should we say Affleck now?), with Josh Duhamel taking over the role.
Hammer also walked away from the Broadway play The Minutes and the Paramount+ series The Offer, and was replaced in the Starz series Gaslit.
He, however, still appeared in Branagh's Death on the Nile, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel the same name, which had wrapped two years before Hammer's allegations surfaced.
Branagh's follow-up to 2017's Murder on the Orient Express was a hard one to get to theaters, mostly due to several delays in the distribution in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. The whodunit was initially slated for a December 2019 release, before being pushed to October 2020, then December of the same year, and subsequently to September 2021. In March last year, when the Hammer allegations were investigated by the LAPD, the film was moved to its final release date: February 11, 2022.
When the film finally made it to cinemas, Armie Hammer was still very much in it as Simon Doyle, just married to Gal Gadot's Linnet "Linny" Ridgeway-Doyle. On this occasion, the outcome of Hammer's s*xual assault scandal was different from that of other embattled men facing misconduct allegations.
In 2017, Kevin Spacey was accused of horrible things by several men and was subsequently cut from Ridley Scott's film All The Money in the World. His scenes were reshot by the late Christopher Plummer, adding $10 million to the film's budget and still making the December release planned for that year.
Similarly, comedian Chris D'Elia, who faced accusations in 2020, was replaced by Tig Notaro in Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead. His scenes were refilmed using green screen and CGI.
In both cases, the filmmakers' reaction to a public scandal — not siding with individuals accused of misconduct, but choosing to believe survivors — was praised, proving that it is possible to deal with problematic stars in a way that is both fair and still relatively viable for studios.
Reshooting Armie Hammer's Scenes In Death Of The Nile Would've Been Too Complicated
With Hammer being dropped from other projects and such an important precedent set by Scott (a producer on Death on the Nile) and Snyder, Branagh's movie was expected to follow suit in the wake of the allegations.
After all, in December 2021, it was revealed that Hammer's scenes in Taika Waititi's upcoming film Next Goal Wins had been reshot with Will Arnett. So why didn't the Walt Disney Studios (owner of 20th Century Studios) film do the same?
At the time of release, IndieWire maintained that, given the nature of Death on the Nile — starring an ensemble cast often featured in the same flamboyantly choreographed scenes and revolving around Branagh's detective Hercule Poirot — reshooting Hammer's part would have been too complicated and expensive an endeavor to pull off.
Not to mention that the two-year gap between wrapping and release would have made reshooting the scenes extremely difficult, especially if other actors were to be involved. There's no answer as to why CGI wasn't used to replace Hammer in a film which relies on the technology quite heavily. With mixed results, according to some viewers.
Though present in the marketing material, Hammer is slightly obscured and his character poster doesn't feature in the promotional images on Instagram, as opposed to those of his co-stars Gadot, Letitia Wright, Emma Mackey and Ali Fazal.
At least, and that's a spoiler if you haven't watched Death on the Nile yet and intend to do so, Hammer plays one of the villains, which means his character is brought to a fictional reckoning that some audience members might find satisfying.
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