Days after Casey Wasserman was named in a tranche of Department of Justice documents related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and accomplice Ghislane Maxwell, the entertainment mogul is facing an internal schism at his namesake company.
“The position Casey Wasserman has put his agents in is inexcusable,” wrote Bethany Cosentino, frontwoman of rock duo Best Coast, in an open letter on Feb. 6 calling for the mogul to “step down” from the music and sports representation powerhouse he founded and has run since 2002.
“We are demanding for Wasserman to remove himself and his name from the agency,” the Lili Trifilio-led band Beach Bunny posted on Feb. 8. “Continuing to be represented by a company led by and named after Casey Wasserman goes against our values and cannot continue,” the Karly Hartzman-MJ Lenderman band Wednesday posted a day later, hours before Chappell Roan posted that she was parting ways with the representation giant.
“No artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values,” Roan wrote in a post on Feb. 9. “I refuse to passively stand by.”
That those missives were directed at the artists’ own management firm may be a telling window into what’s going on at Wasserman’s Westwood offices now.
The mogul’s company, which has a large A-list client roster of artists including Ed Sheeran, Chappell Roan, Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Kasey Musgraves, Lorde and Pharrell, has been rocked by the DoJ’s rounds of Epstein email document releases, which surfaced Wasserman’s suggestive correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003, three years before Epstein was first arrested in Florida on a count of soliciting prostitution.
Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that multiple artists are considering cutting ties with the management firm, which greatly expanded its footprint into music representation five years ago with a major buy of Paradigm’s North American live music unit. Best Coast’s Cosentino, one client that had been brought over in that deal, wrote that her loyalties lie with her agent, Sam Hunt, not with Wasserman as a firm. (Another of those clients from the Paradigm deal, Billie Eilish, had already departed Wasserman in 2024 after a Daily Mail article alleged the CEO had inappropriate relationships with employees.) The comments mark a rare case of artists publicly calling on a top executive to step down from a company, one whose name is not only on the side of the building but in their agents’ email address and how the company touts itself (“Team Wass”).
Efforts are afoot by some of his own agents to buy out the music side of his representation business to spin it off into an independent branded agency without the Wasserman name. It’s unclear where those discussions now stand. Wasserman has counted Providence Equity Partners as a strategic investor since 2022, replacing earlier backers RedBird and Madrone Capital. The company declined to comment for this story.
For now, the company has pulled down a list on its website of the large roster of artists it represents, perhaps due to criticism directed at those musicians on social media due to the association with the 51-year-old CEO. Major stars on the roster have been taking calls from CAA, WME, IAG and UTA, who are looking to recruit clients away from the embattled company. “Chappell Roan is in play. Imagine Dragons are in play,” says one agency source.
Wasserman issued an apology on Jan. 31, shortly after the latest DoJ tranche was released, saying, “I am terribly sorry for having any association” with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in conspiring to sex trafficking minors with Epstein. But Wasserman’s international visibility as chairman of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Committee — he has led the city’s bid since 2014 — has drawn increasing attention to his decades-old ties to Maxwell, as well as his presence on a flight with Epstein, Bill Clinton and others to Africa in 2002.
The DoJ’s latest batch of Epstein files includes an FBI report detailing an interview with an onboard emergency physician for the former president. This doctor recalled that four young women in their early twenties had been on the flight. “No one knew why they were there as everyone else had a purpose,” summarized the agency in a memo.
The executive, the grandson of legendary Hollywood powerbroker Lew Wasserman and son of Lynne Wasserman and stockbroker Jack Myers, has built an empire in his own right through his eponymous company, which has snapped up marketing firms and boutique sports management shingles in a bid to increase its market share in the representation landscape. Wasserman’s biggest buy, one that gave his company the most exposure to the film and TV side of Hollywood, was its purchase of management-production firm Brillstein Entertainment Partners in 2023, which brought clients like Brad Pitt, Florence Pugh, Tiffany Haddish, Adam Sandler and more into the mogul’s fold.
Days after his Jan. 31 apology, Wasserman was in Milan repping LA28 to the international athletic community, where questions followed from reporters to the IOC chair Kirsty Coventry, who replied tersely, “Casey has put out a statement. I have nothing further to add on that.”
Wasserman’s emails to Maxwell from spring 2003 include her sharing that she’d been thinking of him “at inappropriate moments,” to which he responded, “I think of you all the time… So what do I have to do to se you in a tight leather outfit? I am in NY tonight, youre not, what am I to do? Xoxo cw.”
In his apology, Wasserman noted, “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light. I never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. As is well documented, I went on a humanitarian trip as part of a delegation with the Clinton Foundation in 2002 on the Epstein plane. I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them.”
Since the fresh revelations, some key Los Angeles politicians have begun calling for Wasserman’s resignation as head of the 2028 Games committee, including two of the five L.A. County supervisors and a third of the L.A. city council. “LA28 has lauded the likelihood of having more women participate in the Olympic and Paralympic Games than ever before in history,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said in a statement on Feb. 3. “What does that mean when the organization is led by an intimate friend of a convicted human trafficker? Now is the time for LA28 to demonstrate how much they truly value women.”
Embattled L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, heading into a tough reelection fight, suggested in her own statement that it was up to the Games committee to determine Wasserman’s viability. “Ultimately,” she explained, “any decision on the LA28 leadership must be made by the LA28 Board.”
Yet Wasserman’s handpicked 35-member LA28 board appears to be a fortified moat. The well-connected mogul has been instrumental in orchestrating the complex effort to winning a bid for the Games and has aggressively championed the privately funded effort. Sources say he had also taken a hands-on role in all managing and implementing all aspects of the incoming event. Replacing him so close to the Games would appear to be exceedingly difficult.
“Our world-class commercial organization has now made history by generating more than $2 billion in sponsorship revenue with two years until 2028,” Wasserman told THR in December. The mogul has been deeply involved in securing sponsorships for the Games, working with NBCUniversal ad chief Mark Marshall and U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Properties CEO John Slusher to make deals with the likes of Starbucks, Google, Intuit and more.
Wasserman’s LA28 board includes his M&A lawyer Alison Ressler; other major Democratic Party donors like Jeffrey Katzenberg; and sports business figures he’s long known such as Jeanie Buss. Since President Trump returned to power, Wasserman had added MAGA-oriented appointees including Elaine Chao, Kevin McCarthy, Reince Preibus and Diane Hendricks. They were woven into the mix to help orchestrate the Games under right-wing federal purse strings.
Yet now they may act as a further bulwark for Wasserman given Trump has repeatedly called for observers to “move on” from the Epstein case and, on Feb. 4, said, hopefully, “I think it’s really time for the country to maybe get onto something else.”
While internal voices at the representation firm are growing louder — Wasserman svp of music Duffy McSwiggin and senior agent Marty Diamond are among those agents critical of the CEO, Sharon Waxman reported at The Wrap — its unclear whether the few artists who have spoken out publicly represent a significant swathe of Wasserman’s vast client roster across music, sports, TV and movies.
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