The Hollywood mogul who entangled music’s biggest stars in the Epstein scandal

Casey Wasserman is poised to distance himself from his influential talent agency - Guglielmo Mangiapane/REUTERS

It’s as unfortunate as it is grubby. In recent days global music superstars including Coldplay, Chappell Roan, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar have found themselves dragged into the Epstein scandal, as contagion from the release of millions of documents related to the paedophile financier continues to spread. At the heart of this latest sordid chapter is the man whose company arranges their mammoth tours: Casey Wasserman, scion of one of America’s biggest entertainment dynasties and the man in charge of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Wasserman, 51, had been found to have sent a series of flirtatious and intimate emails to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US for sex trafficking. The 2003 messages were buried in the trove of three million files released by the US Department of Justice relating to Epstein.

Now, in a dramatic move to distance the artists from a scandal of his own making, Wasserman has announced that he’s selling his powerhouse namesake agency. In stepping away, he hopes that the company’s roster of musical artists – plus the sports and acting talent that his company also represents – will be untainted by association, as will the agents inside the company who look after them. Wasserman announced the plan to distance himself from his own agency late on Friday after a week of growing pressure from artists for him to quit.

Wasserman is chair and president of LA28, which is overseeing the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics - Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Fanatics

“I’m deeply sorry that my past personal mistakes have caused you so much discomfort,” he wrote in a memo to staff. “At this moment, I believe that I have become a distraction… That is why I have begun the process of selling the company, an effort that is already underway.” The specifics of his plan to divest the mega-agency he founded 24 years ago are not yet clear. He will stay on in his role as head of the 2028 Olympics.

You’ve probably never heard of Wasserman – and that’s just the way he would have wanted it. He’s a behind-the-scenes power player extraordinaire. The man’s global talent management and sports marketing agency Wasserman Group represents over 4,000 household-name clients, from NFL stars to rock musicians. Think a millionaire Jerry Maguire on steroids. But his fall from grace has been seismic thanks to his emails to Maxwell over 20 years ago.

“I think of you all the time,” Wasserman wrote in one. “Where are you? I miss you,” reads another. In a third, Wasserman, who was married at the time, asks: “What do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”, after Maxwell described a flying outfit she had worn. He also asks her to take him to Brazil.

“I can’t sleep – where are you when I need you?” Maxwell wrote back. She offered to massage him in “a few spots that apparently drive a man wild”.

Following the emails’ release, Wasserman made clear that the messages were sent long before Maxwell’s “horrific crimes came to light”. He and his then wife, Laura, met Epstein and Maxwell on a humanitarian mission to Africa with the Clinton Foundation in 2002 – three years before the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested by Epstein, and well before his 2019 arrest for sex trafficking underage girls (he died in custody later that year).

“Following that [Africa] trip, where I never witnessed anything inappropriate, I did not speak to, see or communicate with [Epstein] ever again,” said Wasserman, now divorced, after the cache was released.

While the files show no wrongdoing on Wasserman’s part, the fallout was swift. Wasserman clients including pop megastar Chappell Roan, singer-songwriter Weyes Blood, country musician Orville Peck and football player Abby Wambach abruptly left the management firm.

“As of today, I am no longer represented by Wasserman,” Roan said on Tuesday. “I hold my teams to the highest standards… No artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values.”

Chappell Roan left Wasserman’s management company after his name appeared in files linked to Jeffrey Epstein - Getty

It is not the first time Wasserman has been embroiled in controversy. In 2024, he was accused of having “serial” relationships with junior employees. Following those reports, singer Billie Eilish left the agency. Wasserman declined to comment at the time.

Lewis Capaldi, Liam Gallagher, Bastille, Lorde, SZA and London Grammar are among the other artists still represented by Wasserman’s company. Before Friday’s announcement, the manager of one artist looked after by the agency told me that the situation was grim, particularly as agents within the firm had been tarnished by association.

“It’s a bloody awful situation for the agents we work with there,” said the manager.

Meanwhile, a Wasserman insider summed up how employees felt. “Everyone’s grossed out by them,” the insider told me. Earlier this week, the company removed all its clients’ names from its website “for their protection”, the insider said, after fans began urging the talent to “step away”.

But a solution was being worked on behind the scenes. The Telegraph learnt in the middle of the week that Wasserman, the company, was busily working on plans to uncouple itself from Wasserman, the man. “Quite a few of our clients are planning to stay with the Wasserman music agents they’re currently with. We’re working on some kind of deal that merges us away from Wasserman as an entity, whether that’s joining with another agency or going with a private equity firm and funding it, whatever that looks like,” said a person familiar with the situation. “Lawyers are working it out in real time.” The sale will also include the Brillstein Entertainment Partners talent division that has long handled A-list acting royalty such as Brad Pitt.

The quick resolution explains why Coldplay and Sheeran, who I approached for comment, remained silent. They knew the situation was being sorted.

Coldplay are among the acts rumoured to be distancing themselves from Casey Wasserman following the fallout over his past associations - Getty

Still, it is a hell of a mess. Through hard work and his gold-plated family name, Wasserman became a man of huge status and influence. His grandfather was Lew Wasserman, probably Hollywood’s most powerful post-war mogul as boss of media conglomerate MCA and Universal Pictures. Charlton Heston once described Lew as “the godfather of the film industry”.

It was Lew who broke the system that tied actors to studios. He pioneered political fundraising by media powerbrokers. And in 1975 he decided to release Jaws in a limited number of cinemas, creating “lines around the block” for weeks. It became the first summer blockbuster.

Wasserman Snr also oversaw The Sting, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Animal House, Psycho, Back to the Future and Schindler’s List, as well as television shows such as Miami Vice and Murder, She Wrote.

Lew Wasserman (right), the grandfather of Casey Wasserman, with his long-time client Steven Spielberg in 1994 - Getty

The formidable mogul was described in Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls as “a tall and intimidating man… given to volcanic rages… who wore heavy, oversized glasses that gave him the look of a malevolent owl”.

Lew and his wife, Edie, had a daughter, Lynne, who in 1974 had Casey. Lynne divorced her husband, Jack Myers, when Casey was seven, and he was brought up by his mother and grandparents. Aged 18, Casey changed his surname from Myers to Wasserman to reflect his upbringing.

The younger Wasserman had a charmed life. Aged 12, he flew to Ohio to be a ball boy for the Cleveland Browns. At 18, he wanted to attend a sold-out Guns N’ Roses concert, according to The New York Times. His grandfather told him to call David Geffen, the band’s label boss. He got in.

“Slash was sweating on my head,” he later said of his proximity to the band. It is the kind of access most of us can only dream of.

Wasserman chose sports management because it would have been hard to step out of his grandfather’s shadow in the film world. He launched Wasserman Media in 2002, the year Lew died. Agencies like his act as middlemen between stars, teams and stadiums and, put bluntly, the money – negotiating naming rights, endorsement deals and television contracts.

Jamie Lee Curtis with Wasserman in 2007 at the unveiling of Lew Wasserman’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - Getty

Wasserman expanded rapidly, acquiring rival sports agencies along the way, until it became one of the world’s biggest. An early attempt at music management, booking and arranging tours, failed. That changed in 2022, when Wasserman bought the Paradigm Talent Agency, home to Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. It is effectively this division that could now be spun off.

Profiles paint Wasserman Jnr as determined. To get over a fear of flying, he once undertook 60 hours of pilot training. That is the sort of extreme determination that only a wealthy existence in a rarefied world affords. He is also a philanthropist, a Democratic fundraiser and has, inevitably, continued to move in gilded circles.

Wasserman’s 50th birthday party in 2024 took place in a recreation of Beverly Hills showbiz deli Nate ’n Al’s, where he and Lew used to bond. Guests included Lance Armstrong, Bob Iger, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom and Bill Clinton, according to The Hollywood Reporter. When it comes to this last guest, Lew had been close to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and this relationship had continued under Casey.

“Casey has a keen intellect and a strong desire to make a difference in both business and society,” Bill Clinton told The New York Times in 2013. It was this connection with the former president that saw Wasserman sitting on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet to Africa in 2002 (Clinton has always denied knowledge of Epstein’s sex offending and will later this month testify before a congressional investigation).

Aged 10, Casey helped carry the torch at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. And it is the Olympics that may prove the thorniest issue going forward.

Wasserman chairs the board of LA28, charged with organising the Olympic Games in 2028. On Wednesday night, the board’s executive committee decided to stick by Wasserman, despite the scandal. The committee said that, with the help of external lawyers, it had carried out a review into Wasserman’s “past interactions” with Epstein and Maxwell.

The LA28 board has voted to keep Wasserman on after a legal review of his past links to Epstein and Maxwell - AFP via Getty

“We found Mr Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented,” the committee said. “The committee has determined that, based on these facts, as well as the strong leadership he has exhibited over the past ten years, Mr Wasserman should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful Games.”

Critics disagree. “I think Casey Wasserman needs to step down. Having him represent us on the world stage distracts focus from our athletes and the enormous effort needed to prepare for 2028,” Janice Hahn, an elected official, tells me over email. “This is not about shaming him for his past indiscretions. I worry his continued leadership almost guarantees that our Los Angeles Olympic Games will be tied in subsequent press coverage to his association with a notorious sex trafficker.”

His grandfather Lew assiduously avoided the limelight. “Publicity is for clients, not for us,” the mogul once said. I wonder how that maxim sits with his grandson right now.

Recommended

Epstein conspiracy theorists are re-watching Eyes Wide Shut. This is why

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day's agenda from The Telegraph - direct to your inbox seven days a week.