This week, Chappell Roan made a big announcement: she had left her music representatives, Casey Wasserman’s agency. Roan suddenly firing her longtime agent was a remarkable piece of news for the music world, but it turns out, the reason why she left was an even bigger story. Casey Wasserman is in the Epstein Files, and there are emails between Wasserman and Ghislaine Maxwell. Emails that include weird flirtations and general unpleasantness. Casey Wasserman is an incredibly powerful figure in Hollywood, sports and the music industry. In fact, in addition to his powerful agency, he’s also Chairman of the LA 2028 Olympic committee. Now there are even more calls for Wasserman to step aside from his own agency.

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.

That those three 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”).

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.

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.”

[From THR]

I’m not trying to cape for the guy whatsoever, but the emails were from 2003, not 2013, you know? I actually buy that Wasserman had no idea what Ghislaine was all about. Now, if there are emails from 2013, by all means, cancel the guy and make him resign from everything. I’m just saying, I actually get why he’s digging in his heels and saying this will blow over. That being said, he should leave the chairmanship of the LA Olympics, and the artists signed to his agency have every right to leave it if they want. In addition to Chappell, Orville Peck just fired Wasserman too.

Weird how Wasserman’s photo-op and meeting with Donald Trump wasn’t a dealbreaker for his clients though.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.