CAA Cuts Ties With Kanye West as Hollywood Boycott Calls Grow - Hollywood Reporter

Amid calls to chopped ties with Kanye “Ye” West implicit his repeated antisemitic comments, CAA stopped representing the creator wrong the past month, a root tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The Century City-based endowment bureau had worked with the artist, but his espousing antisemitic rhetoric successful aggregate caller interviews has proved indefensible to immoderate concern partners. With CAA ending its tally with West, Hollywood’s large endowment agencies — including WME and UTA — person supported calls to extremity moving narration with the rapper and manner mogul.

On Oct. 23, Jeremy Zimmer, who leads rival bureau UTA, sent a companywide email titled “Rise of Anti Semitism and Hate,” penning that West’s comments “embolden others to amplify their vile beliefs.” The UTA CEO added: “We can’t enactment hatred speech, bigotry oregon anti-Semitism. Please enactment the boycott of Kanye West.”

Days earlier, Endeavor and WME mogul Ari Emanuel penned a file successful the Financial Times saying that “silence” isn’t an enactment for the concern assemblage fixed West’s antisemitism. “Those who proceed to bash concern with West are giving his misguided hatred an audience,” Emanuel wrote.

While West has a lucrative woody with Adidas for his Yeezy footwear and manner line, different large partners — including French statement Balenciaga, arsenic good arsenic accumulation workplace MRC, which was moving connected a documentary with the creator — have publically distanced themselves and chopped ties. “We cannot enactment immoderate contented that amplifies his platform,” wrote MRC’s leaders, portion Balenciaga noted that it doesn’t person “any relationship” with West moving forward.

While the rapper inactive has authoritative accounts connected Twitter and Instagram, posts containing antisemitic comments — including a tweet connected Oct. 8 that called for “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” — person been removed from the societal media giants’ platforms. In seeming response, West inked a woody to instrumentality ownership of the tiny “free speech” societal media app Parler connected Oct. 17. That app is tally by CEO George Farmer, the hubby of blimpish activistic Candace Owens, who donned a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt on with West astatine Paris Fashion Week earlier this month.

The creator — whose nett worthy is estimated astatine $2 billion, per Forbes‘ calculations — had his past full-length album, 2021’s Donda, distributed by Def Jam Recordings, a part of the publically traded Universal Music Group. In a tweet connected Oct. 17, UMG stated, “There is nary spot for antisemitism successful our society,” but made nary notation to West.

West’s media circuit this period has included stops with Tucker Carlson connected Fox News, rapper N.O.R.E. connected the podcast Drink Champs, and Chris Cuomo astatine NewsNation. “I classify arsenic Jew also, truthful I really can’t beryllium an antisemite,” West told Cuomo.