What the Eff is Going On With Ezra Miller?
Depending on exactly which flavor of nerd you are, you either know Ezra Miller as the D.C. Universe superhero the Flash or Credence Barebone of the Fantastic Beasts series, but if you’re a cool person, you might only know them from bizarre headlines on social media. For the last few years, Miller has been on an international strangling, spitting, possibly grooming and cult-incubating spree, so if you’ve had trouble following it all, here’s what’s up.
Who is Ezra Miller?
If you really haven’t been paying and aren’t any kind of nerd, you might recognize Miller from their roles in movies like We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Trainwreck and TV shows like Californication and The Stand. Basically, they’re very famous, if not quite the Kanye West level of fame you usually expect from accused cult leaders.
When Things Started Getting Weird
Miller has always been eccentric, with a flair for fashion and candidness about their personal life, but in 2019, their behavior went from “eccentric” to “expensively off-putting.” On one film set, crew members noted that they’d taken to wearing a strange unicorn costume in the blazing heat, which was especially bad because they seemed to have stopped showering. Later, an extra said they kept interrupting production with incoherent outbursts, including a joke about a number of minorities walking into a bar that doesn’t make sense but somehow still sounds offensive.
A Cult in Iceland
Things really took a turn in early 2020, when Miller decided apparently on a whim to terrorize Iceland. They rented a mansion and started inviting randos to stay with them, and people who wandered in and out described feeling trapped, witnessing people who seemed hypnotized, and being encouraged to cut off their family and friends to follow Miller to Hollywood. In public, Icelanders were much less friendly to the person they said walked around barefoot who had not, apparently, picked the shower habit back up.
Strangling in Iceland
The general public was unaware anything was up with Miller until April 2020, when a video surfaced of them lashing out, seemingly unprovoked, and strangling a woman at a bar. Miller’s spokesperson later claimed they attacked because the woman had questioned their MMA skills, which, okay.
Possible Grooming in the Dakotas
We’ve got to rewind a bit here to 2016, during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, when a 23-year-old Miller met a 12-year-old Native American activist named Tokata Iron Eyes. Their family says Miller spent the next six years grooming and manipulating Iron Eyes until they dropped out of college in 2021 to follow Miller to Vermont and Hawaii, where witnesses say they abused and controlled the 18-year-old. Iron Eyes has denied any abuse and called the accusations a “smear campaign,” but there is a history of culty vibes here.
Spitting in Hawaii
This also went generally unnoticed until Miller again got violent in public, spitting on, cursing at, and generally accosting patrons in a Hawaii karaoke bar. When Miller was arrested, they explained to the cops that their behavior was in reaction to being assaulted by a Nazi, which… okay.
The KKK in North Carolina
Miller seemed to be fixated on various fascists coming after them. Around the same time, they began routinely wearing a bulletproof vest and claiming the KKK, specifically a chapter in Beulaville, North Carolina, was targeting them, even though they seemed to be in Vermont at the time (it’s hard to keep track). That’s not a totally wild suggestion -- Miller is a queer icon, and the Klan is not known to be fans of that -- but the Southern Poverty Law Center said they didn’t know of any KKK activity in Beulaville, and they’d be the ones who would.
Restrained in Hawaii
The day after the Hawaii karaoke incident, a couple who let Miller stay with them filed for a restraining order against them, claiming Miller had burst into their bedroom, threatened to “bury you and your slut wife,” and stole a passport and wallet. That’s just all-around poor guest behavior.
Assault in Hawaii
Three weeks after that, Miller was arrested again for assault after throwing a chair that hit a woman in the head at a party because they were asked to leave. We can’t imagine why.
Restrained in Massachusetts
Having thoroughly worn out their welcome in Hawaii, Miller and company moved on to the Northeast and took a side quest in Massachusetts, where a woman says Miller asked her 11-year-old child to come to their farm in Vermont, offered them lavish gifts, and generally expressed an “inappropriate interest” in them. After she filed for a restraining order, Miller’s spokesperson claimed it was, in fact, Miller’s “lack of interest” that “clearly upset a disappointed fan when they would not engage with the fan,” causing her to… legally request disengagement.
All Kinds of Shit in Vermont
When Miller left Hawaii, they brought a woman and her three children with them to their farm in Vermont, which brought more heat down on Miller when witnesses complained to authorities that the property was full of guns and weed that the children had way too much access to. The woman’s husband was already pretty mad that she’d left with the children, but it turns out that guy has four wives and domestic violence charges and a strange relationship with Miller, who he says “proposed merging families,” so who knows what’s going on there?
Burglary in Vermont
In August 2022, Miller was charged with burglary for entering an unoccupied home and taking a few bottles of wine. Although it’s the one that’s most plausibly an innocent mistake, as Miller said the home belonged to a friend with whom they believed they had a “what’s mine is yours” agreement, it’s one of the few charges that hasn’t been mysteriously dropped.
Most recently, a witness claimed Miller got offended that Susan Sarandon failed to invite them to a dinner party and “demand that come pay tribute to altar,” which witnesses have described as covered in “bullets, weed, sage, and Flash figurines,” just like you’d find in the closet of every goth teen in America. Miller’s spokesperson said they “would probably call this total bullshit if asked,” but, like, apparently did not ask them, and Sarandon has notably failed to defend this completely innocent mess-around from her “dear friend.”
Apologizing in the Media
A week after the burglary incident, Miller announced in a statement that they had “begun ongoing treatment” for “complex mental health issues” and apologized “to everyone that alarmed with past behavior.” They don’t specify which past behavior, which would be helpful because they’ve denied it all, and the statement coincidentally came on the heels of news that Warner Bros. was considering recasting Miller’s DC character and possibly canceling the upcoming The Flash movie altogether, which is how you know things were getting real serious, because…
Working in Hollywood
(Warner Bros.)
One look at Miller’s Wikipedia page reveals that not only have they somehow been working throughout all this, they’ve been working a lot. Not only have they reprised both of their roles in two of the most successful media franchises of our time, they starred in a biopic about Salvador Dali (and can’t blame method acting because even Dali never took it this far). It makes you wonder what you have to do to never work in this town again.
Top image: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
