Armie Hammer and his family’s ghoulish history is the subject of a new Discovery+ special, House of Hammer. The Edgar Allan Poe fever dream of a TV episode promises to follow five generations of the Hammer family through their sordid past, using “a trove of archive and interviews from survivors and family members,†per a press release. The series promises to dive into a “dysfunctional dynasty with its male characters exhibiting all the devastating consequences of privilege gone wild.†The trailer hits hard and fast: Two women describe their interactions with Hammer through text messages and Instagram DMs the actor sent (“I am 100% cannibal,†he once allegedly wrote), while other talking heads dive into the family that is like Succession “magnified a 100 times.â€
Vanity Fair initially pieced together the long history of intrigue and even outright violent behavior from the Hammer family in a 2021 feature. In 1919, the actor’s great-great-grandfather, Dr. Julius Hammer, was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to jail after performing an abortion on the wife of a Russian diplomat. Hammer’s descendants later cozied up to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin to fortify their oil connections in the region. By the ’90s, the family was exposed for “laundering money; using artwork to fund Soviet espionage; bribing his way into the oil business; and knocking off Fabergé eggs.†And that’s nothing to say of the illegal Nixon campaign contributions, mistresses, and fixers that the actor’s father, Armand Hammer, enjoyed.
Last year, the Death on the Nile actor himself was accused of sexual assault by multiple women, including “violently raping†and physically assaulting a former romantic partner in 2017. Hammer’s lawyer, Andrew Brettler, denied what he called “outrageous allegations†in a statement. The actor has also been accused of allegedly sending text messages that describe lurid sexual fantasies, including rape and cannibalism. In May 2021, Hammer checked into a Florida inpatient treatment facility in an attempt to address his “drug, alcohol, and sex issues.†In the wake of the abuse allegations, Hammer was dropped by his agency WME. Find out if House of Hammer gets into his pivot to selling time-shares when it streams on September 2.