The recent allegations about disgraced actor Hammer and his family’s legacy were investigated in the recent Discovery+ docuseries House of Hammer. The three-part series featured new testimony from members of Hammer’s family, and interviews with women who claimed they received inappropriate DMs from Hammer, including some with cannibalistic themes.
However, despite the promise of what could have been an enlightening documentary, entrepreneur and former reality TV star Frankel had some big problems with the series and others like it.
“I’m noticing with a lot of these Netflix movies and these crazies, The Tinder Swindler, the Armie Hammer, the Bad Vegan, at the end you’re dissatisfied,” she said on the most recent episode of her podcast, Just B with Bethenny Frankel.
“All this stuff is presented in a way that everything is, truly these people were monsters, and then at the end, it’s like ‘yeah, slap on the wrist.’ So I find them to be dissatisfying,” she said.
Despite being eagerly anticipated, House of Hammer, which documented the rise and fall of Call Me by Your Name star Armie Hammer in 2021 after allegations of emotional abuse, sexual violence, and manipulation against him, received middling reviews from critics and viewers. The show has an average viewer score of 5.7 out of 10 from 1,300 reviews on IMDb.
“I know it’s not a movie with a Hollywood happy ending, but like, can we produce these movies when we have a…clear ending?” Frankel said.
She also took issue with the ending of The Tinder Swindler, which saw the man who swindled millions of dollars from his Tinder dates, Simon Leviev, receive a short jail sentence. He is now a free man who charges $200 for a Cameo video and $2,000 for business videos, according to The Independent.
“Look at The Tinder Swindler, so what does that [the ending] mean? He got off? I don’t know. I can’t tell you to make a Hollywood ending for a goddamn documentary. I get it. It’s just weird,” Frankel said. “Obviously, there’s creativity used in documentaries and creative license, and they tee you up and at the end, you’re like ‘urgh,’”
The House of Hammer documentary series aired on September 2 on Discovery+ and featured Armie Hammer’s aunt Casey Hammer giving her account of growing up as part of the famous family. She described her nephew as a “monster” and stated she wasn’t shocked by the allegations made against him.
Hammer’s estranged wife, Elizabeth Chambers recently revealed to E! that she wasn’t planning on watching House of Hammer, but when she did, she found it “heartbreaking on so many levels and very painful.”
Newsweek reached out to representatives for Hammer for comment.