WME agent Adam Venit is on leave after being identified as the subject of Terry Crews’ account of his own sexual assault, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
On Oct. 10, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star — and WME client — tweeted that a “high-level Hollywood executive” had groped his “privates” at a party last year. The incident occurred in view of Crews’ wife.
“Jumping back, I said, ‘What are you doing?!’ He just grinned like a jerk,” Crews wrote. The actor added that he told everyone he knew at the party who worked with Venit about what happened, and that Venit called the next day with an apology but not an explanation.
WME and Crews had no comment. Venit does not represent Crews. His clients include Adam Sandler, Diane Keaton, Eddie Murphy, Kevin James, Rob Lowe, Russell Brand, Shawn Levy, Steve Martin, Sylvester Stallone and Vince Vaughn — as well as Brett Ratner and Dustin Hoffman, who are facing sexual misconduct allegations of their own.
Even prior to The New York Times’ Oct. 5 bombshell report about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct allegations, which opened the floodgates to similar accounts involving multiple individuals across the industry, several agents had quietly been dropped for personnel issues that sources have told THR were related to harassment, including Erik Horine, who exited ICM in June, and Ryan Ly, with whom CAA parted ways in September.
On Oct. 20, APA fired youth talent agent Tyler Grasham after multiple young men accused him of sexual abuse. And earlier Friday, David Guillod, co-CEO of management-production company Primary Wave Entertainment, took a leave of absence following actress Jessica Barth’s accusation that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2012.
This article was originally published in The Hollywood Reporter.