Chappell Roan has left Casey Wasserman‘s music agency over the LA28 chief’s recently revealed connection to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
“No artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values,” the “Pink Pony Club” superstar posted online today. “I refuse to passively stand by.”
The exit of the Kiely Mosiman, Jackie Nalpant and Anna Bewers-represented Roan is the biggest and perhaps harshest blow against the increasingly besieged grandson of legendary agent Lew Wasserman. Contacted by Deadline, reps for Wasserman, who has been in Italy for the Olympic Winter Games, had no comment on Roan’s bombshell.
A Wasserman client since 2023, Roan’s action follows fellow artists like Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, plus bands Beach Bunny and Wednesday walking away from Wasserman in the past few days. The decision by Roan a.k.a. Kayleigh Rose Amstutz represents the supreme A-lister move since Billie Eilish left Wasserman in 2024 when a previous sex scandal swirled around the executive.
When Wasserman’s name came up in Epstein Files last month, the exec put out a statement that clearly hoped to see the whole matter go away: “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light,” said Wasserman. “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.”
The expression of contrition didn’t make the toxicity of Epstein go away for Wasserman.
Adding to Wasserman’s woes, a series of Los Angeles politicians, including newly minted mayoral candidate and two-term City Council member Nithya Raman, have called the 2028 Olympics chair a growing “distraction” to the Games and the City of Angels.
Fearing financial and political retribution from Wasserman’s buddy Donald Trump, reelection-seeking Mayor Karen Bass sidestepped a POV on the LA28 chair and put it all on the LA28 board and Olympics leaders. Last week, as Wasserman’s seemingly adulterous 2003 correspondence with the convicted and incarcerated Maxwell came out, IOC president Kirsty Coventry dismissed the Epstein information about Wasserman as no big deal. As concerns not just about the Epstein connection but also the cost of the 2028 Games grow, the LA28 board, which includes the likes of Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jessica Alba, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Jamie Lee Curtis, has said nothing publicly so far.
What is becoming louder and louder, even more now after Roan’s post, is an uprising over Wasserman’s repeated presence in the DOJ-dumped Epstein files occurring among some of his top employees. Power players such as Marty Diamond and Duffy McSwiggin have reached out to a number of companies and agencies around town in the past few days.
The Wasserman agents have been pitching potentially interested parties in either taking on them and their clients, buying up Wasserman’s music biz or financing the agents purchasing the company from Wasserman himself. So far, no one has taken up the crew on any of the options, I hear. However, a well-placed source tonight acknowledged, “It all changes now [that] Chappell has left Casey.”
“This is always how it ends,” the source remarked on Wasserman’s rise to Tinseltown prominence out of his family’s shadow and his Olympic dreams. “It’s a matter of time; the bleeding won’t stop.”