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Just over a year after Jared Leto withstood a catalogue of sexual misconduct accusations published in AirMail, the BBC broadcast a documentary titled “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”
In it, director Alice McShane (“Russell Brand: In Plain Sight”) teams up with the reporter behind the AirMail story, Elena Clavarino, and BBC producer Jessica Sartenaer to set out the numerous allegations against Leto, the star of recent Hollywood movies including “Tron: Ares” and “Masters of the Universe” as well as the frontman of rock band 30 Seconds to Mars.
Ten women’s stories are featured in the resulting documentary, which was broadcast in the U.K. Thursday, of whom four allege criminal sexual conduct. Leto has denied all the claims, saying in a statement released via his reps: “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life. These claims are absolutely and categorically false.” (BBC Studios is handling international sales on the doc.)
After a whirlwind 24 hours, McShane, whose documentary on Brand won her a number of broadcasting awards, sat down with Variety to discuss how making “In Plain Sight” helped her with the Leto documentary, how she was able to paint a picture of the women’s allegations on a BBC budget and how Leto has not yet responded directly to the filmmakers.
How long have you been working on this for?
We started in April ‘25. That’s when a post went up on Instagram by an LA-based DJ called Allie Teilz [accusing Leto of sexual misconduct].
Then while you were working on this AirMail published an article in which nine women accused him of sexual misconduct…
That’s right… It just takes a huge amount of time to get a documentary to air. I was a bit like, “It’s a bit of a race against time.” But then the AirMail article was published and nine women’s accounts in that piece, and we really thought, “Wow, this is the story, you know, this is the moment.” It was just really surprising when not a huge amount seemed to happen [to Leto’s career] after that article went live.
So that really kind of renewed our energy, I think, to push forward with the documentary and look at what was going on.
At what point did you feel like you had enough for the documentary, both in terms of contributors and in terms of what was being alleged?
I think there’s always the appetite to build the strongest evidence base that you possibly can, because it’s so important that these documentaries have an impact, not least for the women that are involved. They are coming forward and facing this very scary prospect of going up against a very wealthy and powerful man like Jared Leto, and you want the documentary for them to do its job and to hopefully get some accountability on their behalf. So that’s one of the main drivers for really gathering a strong evidence base. But also legally, of course it’s risky for the BBC to do a film like this so on that side of things as well, they really want to see that these cases are strong, and that they’re very deeply corroborated.
With a documentary you obviously need footage as well. Are you thinking about how you’re going to illustrate these stories as you’re filming or is it something you look at after you’ve gathered all the testimonies?
To really bring the women’s stories to life, you have to do some level of reconstruction. I really wanted to give that extra visual aid to help immerse [the viewer] in the story, so you’re really writing down all of the beats, exactly what they’re saying, and you’re just thinking of ways to bring that to life.
[DOP] Theo Tennant and I decided to use this particular filter on the lens, which creates a blurred dream world almost, it’s kind of refracted light, and we wanted to film all of the reconstruction using this particular lens to take you back, like a memory.
Isabel [not her real name] was assaulted in a motel in 2002 and we did we did a fairly narrative piece of recon with her. Going back to budgets being tight, all the women in the recon are played by me and Jess in a selection of wigs: there was no budget for actors so you really are having to be resourceful in that respect…. Obviously you have to okay that with a contributor because it can be quite confronting watching recon of your story. But we wanted to bring that kind of dingy, gross motel to life and give that sense of what must it have felt like when she was walking into that bathroom.
The [women’s] stories are undeniably engaging but in a world of very flashy content everywhere, the bar is so high for documentary making now. Netflix and Amazon and all of these very well-funded organizations, the BBC just can’t compete with those but there is an expectation that films need to look a certain way. So it’s all about being resourceful and creative.
Are you able to give a sense of what the budget was for this?
I have no idea, but I could tell you that it’s an absolute fraction of what a Netflix budget might be.
There has been chatter on some forums online that this documentary is only coming out now because Leto is no longer in a position of power and is “box office poison” after his last few films flopped. Would you want to address that?
To me it’s completely irrelevant whether he’s “box office poison” or not. He’s still incredibly famous. The point we make in the film is that despite the allegations that were put forward in the AirMail article, he’s still been in two major movies [since]. I know some of his films have flopped. That doesn’t make any difference. The BBC current affairs department, we’re not Hollywood.… we are journalists. We’re there to hold power to account, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
What did you learn from having directed “Russell Brand: In Plain Sight”?
I think the things that helped make the Brand documentary such a success — first, the incredible contributors, of course, that is always absolutely paramount. Second, the archive. It can be so chilling to position a woman’s story next to a piece of relevant archive, when you hear from the man in question, and there was a lot of that that was available with Leto as well. So I knew from the beginning when I took the job on that there would be scope to use archive in a similar way, so that’s another thing I brought from the Brand film.
And then finally, the thing that really captured the imagination, I suppose, certainly of the British public, was exposing the enabling of the U.K. broadcasters … I thought that was really, really important, and I think that that was absolutely central to the story, alongside these awful accounts of abuse by Brand. I think there are similarities in the Leto doc … Obviously they’re completely different men with a completely different set of allegations that they are facing. But there is certainly consistencies with the narcissism and being driven by power and control.
They were both — Brand less now — powerful and wealthy and famous men that had a real hold over some young women.
With Brand, he’s now facing criminal charges so there’s a real sense of accountability following your documentary. It’s been over a year since the AirMail story was published about Leto but it doesn’t appear to have impacted his career much if at all. Why do you think that is?
It’s quite a mystery, isn’t it? There’s something about our culture at the moment — I think there’s something that I feel might be happening 10 years on from #MeToo. It just feels like the outrage about stories like this has slightly cooled, and I think that also with the rise of the manosphere, and also people in very significant positions of power having had allegations leveled at them as well about their treatment of women, I think that in a way, these sorts of stories have been normalized in people’s minds, and I just don’t think that they get the traction perhaps that they would have done 10 years ago. So I think that’s part of it. I also think with Leto, he’s cultivated this persona of this kind of weird, enigmatic, mysterious guy, and I think, in a way, that sort of shielded him from accountability.
He’s also an incredibly good-looking man, and I think that there is an element of “pretty” privilege here, and that that actually came through in a lot of the interviews with the women.
He also looks very youthful given he’s now 54…
At one point I was thinking we should [show] stills of him each time we had a card that said “Leto was 34 at the time” but if you put a picture of him up, he looks about 15, so I don’t think it really quite landed the point of how old he was.
What was it like engaging with Leto’s representatives when you gave him the right of reply?
We gathered all the evidence, we put together the right of reply letter, which is a very lengthy document where we lay out in detail all of the women’s stories that we intend to include. Usually in a current affairs film you give two weeks…so we sent it out on July 3, expecting it to be back on July 17. Our executive producer Mike Radford, he sent it directly to Leto via email and asked for confirmation of receipt, which didn’t come — and it didn’t come and it didn’t come.
We contacted everybody that we knew that he was connected to — agents, lawyers, his long-time business partner — all of the associates that we could see that are still connected to him in recent times — saying “We’ve sent an important letter to your client, please could you confirm receipt of that letter?”
And it was really radio silence across the board. It was quite strange. And then the deadline came, and still nothing. I have never experienced that before, where you just had absolutely nothing back.
I’d find it very hard to believe that he didn’t [get the letter]. We called him, we texted him.
Leto eventually issued a denial to the press via his reps late Thursday, U.K. time. While making the documentary were you concerned about legal action, especially given the bar in the U.K. for defamation is much lower (without the protection of the first amendment)?
As yet, we still have not [directly] had a response to the allegations that we put to him. So who knows what’s going to happen? We may get a letter. We may never get a letter. He may take us to court. He may not take us to court. But whatever eventuality that comes, we are prepared.
This interview has been edited and condensed. Variety has contacted Leto’s reps, who didn’t respond by press time.
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