WME agent Brandt Joel at the centre of the controversy over the text “Fuck the left, kill everyone”

Brandt Joel, a top agent at WME who represents Jason Momoa and Matthew McConaughey, among others, is embroiled in a scandal within the company after he sent and then deleted an inflammatory text message to a WhatsApp group in response to the killing of six Israeli hostages over the weekend.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages killed by Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip, including an Israeli-American prisoner.

In a group chat showing solidarity with Israel, which includes WME employees but is not officially affiliated with the company, the news of the hostages' deaths was discussed after someone shared President Joe Biden's official statement on the incident. In screenshots of the group chat obtained by The Hollywood ReporterNancy Josephson and Katie Slater of WME comment on the tragedy of the murders. Joel responded with a text message: “Fuck the leftists who kill everyone.”

A source said THR that Joel deleted the message a few minutes later.

Joel, a senior partner at WME who also represents Idris Elba, Justin Timberlake and Mahershala Ali, previously served in the U.S. Navy for four years and in Iraq before becoming an agent.

A source tells THR that this isn't the first time Joel has sent polarizing messages in the group chat. He also shared a previous text message in which Joel said WME had been “weak” toward clients who spoke out about the ongoing war in Gaza. “We have clients in every department that we should have fired and didn't. This shows that we are weak and have tolerated abhorrent behavior,” Joel wrote, though it's unclear which clients he was referring to directly and what behavior he called “abhorrent.”

Joel added, “This is all Polyanna crap. To my knowledge, no one other than Richard has commented on this chat and responded to it. Thankfully there are very few outliers, but we haven't fired anyone yet and that's disgraceful.”

The bloody and brutal war in Gaza has created great tension in Hollywood, and those who have spoken out about the conflict have been controversial. In October, a few weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed some 1,200 people and captured over 200, the CAA came under fire after power operative Maha Dakhil posted comments on her personal Instagram. On October 18, Dakhil reposted a statement from an account called Free Palestine that said, “You are about to learn who supports genocide.” Dakhil added, “This is my opinion.” She then posted a photo with the caption, “What is more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.”

Dakhil immediately apologized and stayed with the company, but was fired by her client Aaron Sorkin over the social media comments and was forced to step down from her position as co-head of CAA's film division immediately after the incident and resigned from the agency's internal board. She has since returned to a leadership role at the company.

In November, actress Melissa Barrera, a WME client, was fired from Scream VII after a series of social media posts about the situation in Gaza. “Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” she wrote in a post on Instagram Stories. “Everyone is locked in a corner, they have nowhere to go, there is no electricity, no water… People have learned nothing from our history. And just like in our history, people are still watching in silence as everything happens. THIS IS GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING.”

Reports at the time suggested that WME was also considering dropping Barrera because of her stance, but the actress said THR in an interview in March that she always felt supported by her representatives. “It's definitely tough because I was just in such a foggy state of mind, but I was very lucky,” she said through tears as she recalled the tumultuous moment. “I had a lot of support from the people around me: my team and especially my press agents – they just carried me.”