Actor Blake Stuerman Says His Relationship with Bryan Singer was Abusive & Trumatic
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30 year-old actor Blake Stuerman says his four year relationship with director Bryan Singer was abusive and traumatic in a first person essay in Monday’s Variety.
Variety: Stuerman met Singer in 2009 in New York City when he was 18 years old, and entered into a sexual relationship with him shortly after; Singer was 43. Their time together ended after Stuerman was fired as Singer’s assistant in June 2013 on the film “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” which opened the following year. Stuerman believes his relationship with Singer was abusive and traumatic. He says he was further traumatized by witnessing an incident in 2012 in which Singer allegedly assaulted someone.
Singer’s lawyer, Andrew Brettler, responded in a four-page letter in which he called Stuerman’s allegations “uncorroborated, inflammatory, and highly defamatory” and that Stuerman “simply has an axe to grind” against Singer. But Brettler did not dispute — nor did he comment on — the allegations that Singer had sex with Stuerman beginning when he was 18. He also did not dispute or comment on the claim that Singer assaulted someone and Stuerman witnessed it.
Stuerman writes: I was newly 18, alone in a hotel suite with a rich and famous man who was giving me his full attention, and I was intoxicated for the first time in my life. My chest grows tight now just thinking about it. You can imagine what happened next. I didn’t know I was allowed to say no. I didn’t know that alcohol was affecting my decision-making ability.
Around this time, Bryan went from rich to fuck you fuck you fuck you rich. He was making tens of millions a year, sometimes millions a month, off the television show “House,” which he had an executive producer credit on. He seemed to consider himself untouchable. And I thought I was so incredibly lucky to have such a talented and powerful man as my mentor. He invited me to sets, post-production sessions, script readings, development meetings, film festivals, parties and dinners. He would pay for meals and was extremely generous — he even took me to dinner with Sir Elton John. He also began to expect sex more frequently.
Singer allegedly threatened to kill Stuerman if he left him.
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In Brettler’s response to Variety’s email detailing Stuerman’s allegations, he refers to the memo as “a bullet point list of the uncorroborated, inflammatory, and highly defamatory allegations from Mr. Stuerman”; but Brettler also provided a series of text messages from Stuerman to Singer that further corroborate that Stuerman’s relationship with Singer was sexual in nature, including redacted nude images of Stuerman; that Stuerman felt dependent on Singer for money; and that Stuerman’s mental health had deteriorated by the end of his relationship with Singer.
“As you will see, [Mr. Stuerman] also repeatedly asks Mr. Singer for money, for a job, and for a place to live,” Brettler writes. “Early in their relationship, he and Mr. Singer both expressed their affection for one another, but as time passed, Mr. Stuerman grew increasingly paranoid, delusional, and needy. It was then that Mr. Singer began distancing himself from Mr. Stuerman.”
Brettler did not address Stuerman’s allegation of witnessing an assault by Singer, nor Stuerman’s allegation that Singer got him drunk before their first sexual encounter when Stuerman was 18.
“The types of allegations that Mr. Steurman [sic] now is leveling against Mr. Singer are nothing more than self-serving and conclusory statements with absolutely no evidentiary support,” Brettler writes. He adds: “Mr. Stuerman is angry and upset that he allegedly did not receive the ‘credit’ that he thought he deserved on Mr. Singer’s films....And, most of all, he is angry and upset that Mr. Singer is no longer funding Mr. Stuerman’s jet setting lifestyle and supporting Mr. Stuerman financially, as he had done for so many years.”
“It is evident, based on the limited information that Mr. Vary provided, that Mr. Stuerman does not want to take any responsibility and/or accountability for the decisions he made and actions he took as an adult,” writes Brettler. “Rather, he spins a tale of alleged grooming and abuse, supposedly at the hands of Mr. Singer, even though Mr. Stuerman acknowledges he was a ‘willing participant’ in the relationship.”
In separate correspondence, Brettler pointed Variety to a National Enquirer article about Justin Bieber’s “Weed-Mobile” that includes a photo of Stuerman among partygoers who “drank beer and reportedly smoked weed” on an evening in September 2012: “This article further undermines Mr. Stuerman’s claim that ‘until he met Mr. Singer, he’d never drank or done drugs.’”
As Stuerman writes, and many people corroborated to Variety, Stuerman and Singer had met three years earlier, in 2009.
Gary Goddard could not be reached for comment.
