Ezra Miller Accused of Harassing Woman in Germany, and Iceland Choking Victim Breaks Her Silence (EXCLUSIVE)

In the spring of 2020, as the COVID cri­sis was rapid­ly becom­ing a glob­al pan­dem­ic, Ezra Miller began wear­ing out their wel­come in Iceland.

The actor — best known for play­ing the DC super­hero the Flash in sev­er­al films for Warn­er Bros. — was set to start film­ing the studio’s lat­est entry in the “Har­ry Pot­ter” fran­chise, “Fan­tas­tic Beasts: The Secrets of Dum­b­le­dore,” in Lon­don when the shoot was halt­ed on March 15, 2020, due to COVID. In the weeks after, Miller, who iden­ti­fies as non­bi­na­ry and uses “they/them” pro­nouns, became a reg­u­lar at bars in Iceland’s cap­i­tal, Reyk­javík, where locals came to know and even befriend them. Many rec­og­nized Miller from their ear­li­est break­out movies, 2012’s “The Perks of Being a Wall­flower” and 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” where they played a trou­bled teen who brought a bow and arrow to school and mur­dered his classmates.

Miller, then 27, also start­ed to show a dif­fer­ent, volatile side to their per­son­al­i­ty — one that began to con­cern Icelanders.

“There was always some­thing with Ezra,” said Car­los Reynir, then a bar­tender at Prik­ið Kaf­fi­hús, a pub locat­ed in the heart of Reykjavík.

Reynir said he inter­vened in two alter­ca­tions at Prik­ið involv­ing Miller. The first was a heat­ed argu­ment between Miller and a male patron that began as ban­ter but end­ed in the actor putting the man in a choke­hold and lat­er slap­ping him. Reynir, who broke up the fight, says Miller lat­er apol­o­gized, and the oth­er patron quick­ly shrugged it off as a joke. The actor was allowed to con­tin­ue fre­quent­ing the bar.

“We just brushed it off as two friends get­ting drunk and get­ting in a fight,” Reynir said. “It’s Ice­land. That hap­pens twice a weekend.”

But the next alter­ca­tion, in which Miller assault­ed a young woman at the bar, was hard­er to dis­count. The inci­dent grabbed glob­al head­lines when footage of Miller plac­ing the woman in a choke­hold and then push­ing her to the ground went viral online in ear­ly April 2020.

Soon after the inci­dent, Vari­ety spoke with the woman Miller assault­ed; she recent­ly con­firmed that her com­ments could be print­ed for this arti­cle. She asked to remain anony­mous out of con­cern for her pri­va­cy, as she’s telling her sto­ry pub­licly for the first time.

In the blur­ry video, Miller is seen con­fronting the woman — who is smil­ing and wav­ing her arms as she walks toward them — and ask­ing, “Do you want to fight? Is that what you do?” After Miller grabs her neck, she lets out an audi­ble gasp. The per­son film­ing the video stopped to inter­vene, Vari­ety has confirmed.

Accord­ing to three sources, the woman had been speak­ing to Miller at the bar pri­or to the quar­rel. She said she inquired about the actor’s feet — vis­i­ble in flip-flops — after notic­ing some wounds, which Miller explained were bat­tle scars from a fight. After dis­cussing how they got them, she began to walk away, but turned around and joked, “But just so you know, I could take you in a fight.” Miller replied, “You real­ly want to fight?” and the woman told them to meet her in the smok­ing area in two minutes.

Even­tu­al­ly, Miller con­front­ed her out­side the bar.

“I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t,” she said.

It’s a sen­ti­ment echoed by anoth­er woman, Nadia (she request­ed that only her first name be used, out of con­cern for her pri­va­cy), who alleges in an inter­view with Vari­ety that after a warm, two-year friend­ship with Miller, most­ly via text mes­sage, the actor came to her Berlin apart­ment late one evening in Feb­ru­ary 2022 at her invi­ta­tion. They hadn’t seen each oth­er since they had a con­sen­su­al sex­u­al encounter in 2020. But after a friend­ly inter­ac­tion, Miller’s mood sharply turned when she told them that they couldn’t smoke inside her home.

“That just set them off,” Nadia said. “I asked them to leave about 20 times, maybe more. They start­ed insult­ing me. I’m a ‘trans­pho­bic piece of shit.’ I’m a ‘Nazi.’ It became so, so stress­ful for me. They were going around my house, look­ing at every­thing, touch­ing every­thing, spread­ing tobac­co leaves on the floor. It felt dis­gust­ing and very intrusive.”

After rough­ly a half-hour of plead­ing, Nadia said she final­ly con­vinced Miller to leave once she called the police. The inci­dent left her deeply dis­turbed. While she is clear that she nev­er felt at risk of sex­u­al assault that night in her apart­ment, she believed the actor “could some­how attack me physically.”

“I total­ly felt unsafe,” she said.

Five peo­ple — two friends, a women’s rights advo­cate, a Ger­man social work­er, and Nadia’s Ger­man lawyer — told Vari­ety that they spoke with Nadia soon after her alleged encounter with Miller and cor­rob­o­rat­ed her account. In April, Nadia filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint about her expe­ri­ence, which Vari­ety has con­firmed with the Ger­man State Prosecutor’s Office in Berlin. While the pros­e­cu­tor was inves­ti­gat­ing a charge of tres­pass­ing against Miller, their office says that it has dis­con­tin­ued its pro­ceed­ings since the actor is no longer in Germany.

Just over a month after her alleged encounter with Miller, Nadia saw news reports that the actor had been arrest­ed half a world away in Hawaii, for dis­or­der­ly con­duct and harass­ment, after anoth­er tur­bu­lent inci­dent at a bar. In May, TMZ released body-cam video of Miller’s arrest in Hawaii, in which the actor records much of the encounter for, they say, “NFT cryp­to art.” In the video, they also say a patron at a bar “declared him­self as a Nazi,” and accused a police offi­cer of touch­ing their penis dur­ing a search.

Nadia real­ized she wasn’t alone in her expe­ri­ence with the actor. “It seems to be a pat­tern,” she said. “They jet-set abuse.”

That alleged pat­tern has only grown more alarm­ing. After a sec­ond arrest in Hawaii in April, this time for sec­ond-degree assault after alleged­ly throw­ing a chair at a woman and leav­ing her with a cut on her fore­head, the actor addi­tion­al­ly has had two pro­tec­tion orders placed against them. The first, as report­ed by the Los Ange­les Times, was by par­ents of a now-18-year-old from the Stand­ing Rock Indi­an Reser­va­tion in North and South Dako­ta, who claim Miller manip­u­lat­ed their daugh­ter when she was between the ages of 12 and 18. The sec­ond was by par­ents of a cur­rent 12-year-old in Mass­a­chu­setts that involves an inci­dent that occurred just days before their alleged con­fronta­tion with Nadia in Berlin.

In a sto­ry about the lat­ter inci­dent, The Dai­ly Beast report­ed that Miller alleged­ly got into an aggres­sive con­fronta­tion with the Green­field, Mass., fam­i­ly over the mother’s casu­al ref­er­ence to “her tribe” and Miller’s claim that the board game Parcheesi appro­pri­ates Rasta­far­i­an cul­ture. At one point, Miller alleged­ly revealed a gun and said to a fam­i­ly mem­ber, “Talk­ing like that could get you into a real­ly seri­ous situation.”

In June, a Rolling Stone sto­ry alleged that Miller has been hous­ing a moth­er and her three young chil­dren at their Ver­mont farm amid unsafe liv­ing con­di­tions, with unse­cured guns scat­tered around the expan­sive prop­er­ty. (The moth­er told Rolling Stone that Miller helped her escape an abu­sive marriage.)

As for Miller’s future as a movie star, it’s unclear whether they will con­tin­ue to per­form as the Scar­let Speed­ster in future projects, but Warn­er Bros. is still com­mit­ted to releas­ing its $200 mil­lion-bud­get­ed tent­pole “The Flash” in the­aters in June 2023. Accord­ing to sources with knowl­edge of the project, the film sim­ply costs too much for the stu­dio to scrap entire­ly and reshoot­ing with a new actor in Miller’s role is sim­i­lar­ly cost-pro­hib­i­tive, because the actor is in vir­tu­al­ly every scene. Also, the film like­ly can’t gen­er­ate the rev­enues need­ed to turn a prof­it with­out a robust the­atri­cal run, so putting the movie direct­ly on HBO Max is also unlike­ly. All eyes are on Warn­er Bros., how­ev­er, as to how it con­tin­ues to nav­i­gate the chop­py waters sur­round­ing Miller. The stu­dio already had to down­play the actor’s involve­ment in “Fan­tas­tic Beasts: The Secrets of Dum­b­le­dore,” which opened in the­aters in April.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for Miller had no com­ment. A source close to the sit­u­a­tion tells Vari­ety that Miller hopes to address the alle­ga­tions at some point, but they have cho­sen to pri­vate­ly focus on their health and heal­ing over the com­ing months.

When Miller start­ed show­ing up at Prik­ið Kaf­fi­hús in Reyk­javík, their unusu­al behav­ior was at first chalked up to the eccen­tric whims of a vis­it­ing celebrity.

“If they weren’t light­ing incense or can­dles, or even bring­ing in their own Blue­tooth speak­er and play­ing it super loud to over­pow­er our music, there was always some­thing,” Reynir, the bar­tender at Prik­ið, said. “We’d approach them and say, ‘Hey, do you mind? There are oth­er peo­ple here.’ It was a bit of a chuck­le. And then they would go, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and they’d stop, only to con­tin­ue it a lit­tle bit later.”

The day Miller assault­ed the woman at Prik­ið in April 2020, her ini­tial inter­ac­tions with them felt at first to be in a sim­i­lar­ly barbed-yet-easy­go­ing vein. When she told Miller to meet her in the smok­ing area, she said she meant it as “a joke” — and it appeared that Miller took it as one when they remained inside.

But then a friend of the woman approached Miller and told them that he’d heard the actor didn’t want to fight. “My friend didn’t have to say that,” the woman allowed. “It was just a joke, obvi­ous­ly — but [Miller] took that lit­er­al­ly and got super mad and came run­ning out­side.” That’s when one of the woman’s friends start­ed recording.

“I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t,” she said. “All of a sud­den, [they’re] on top of me, chok­ing me, still scream­ing in my face if I want to fight. My friend who’s film­ing sees [they’re] obvi­ous­ly not jok­ing and it’s actu­al­ly seri­ous, so he stops film­ing, and push­es [them] off me as [they’re] still try­ing to fight me. Two guy friends of mine are actu­al­ly hold­ing [Miller] back as [they’re] scream­ing, ‘This is what you want­ed! This is what you want­ed!’” (At the time of the inter­view, it was unclear whether the woman was aware Miller iden­ti­fies as nonbinary.)

The woman said Miller spat in her friend’s face “mul­ti­ple times” — an affront that was dan­ger­ous in the ear­ly, pre-vac­cine days of the pan­dem­ic. (Vari­ety in 2020 con­firmed Miller’s actions with her friend, who also wished to remain anony­mous.) Even­tu­al­ly, she said, a bar­tender — Reynir — ran out­side to break up the fight.

Reynir had arrived ear­ly for his shift that day and had seen the woman in the smok­ing area with her friends and Miller. When he saw the sit­u­a­tion “going way out of hand,” he decid­ed to get involved.

“[Miller] grabs me by the throat as I’m try­ing to ush­er them out the [back] door and tells me they’re not leav­ing,” Reynir said. He added that Miller repeat­ed­ly claimed that the woman’s friends had pushed them. “Which they didn’t,” the bar­tender said.

“They pro­ceed­ed to spit in my face sev­er­al times, so with the final push I closed and locked the door,” he added.

Reynir then ran to lock the tavern’s front entrance, where Miller, who had run along the perime­ter of the build­ing, was bang­ing on the door and scream­ing to be let in. Even­tu­al­ly, the actor was ush­ered into a car by two local friends and dri­ven away. Vari­ety has cor­rob­o­rat­ed Reynir’s account with three oth­er sources, includ­ing man­age­ment at Prikið.

The woman report­ed the inci­dent to the police — the report was con­firmed by Vari­ety — but didn’t press charges. Reynir was allowed to fin­ish work ear­ly and took a COVID PCR test the next morn­ing, which came back neg­a­tive, he said.

“I do believe the inci­dent at the bar was what ruined [Miller’s] rep­u­ta­tion thor­ough­ly in Ice­land,” Reynir said. “They stopped com­ing to oth­er bars short­ly after.”

Reynir, who left Prik­ið recent­ly and now works at a Chi­nese restau­rant, was struck by how quick­ly Miller turned against the local com­mu­ni­ty, leav­ing a trail of destruc­tion in their path.

“I thought they were great to begin with. We talked about all kinds of spir­i­tu­al things and went deep into phi­los­o­phy,” said Reynir. “They had this won­der­ful mask on as this total sweet­heart with a com­plete­ly open mind, who’s ready to help and talk to any­one. But as soon as some­one does some­thing they don’t agree with or doesn’t like, it’s their fault, not [Ezra’s].”

The day the video of Miller chok­ing the woman in Ice­land went viral, Nadia saw it on her Twit­ter feed. She called them immediately.

“Ezra was in Ice­land in a car with a friend,” Nadia said. “I could hear the friend or maybe friends, I don’t know, laugh­ing, and Ezra was in a very good mood. Ezra was like, ‘Don’t wor­ry. It’s just a mis­un­der­stand­ing. It’s noth­ing. Noth­ing happened.’”

At the time, Nadia had known Miller for just a few months, but she felt she had no rea­son to doubt them. “In the video, it’s true that the girl is smil­ing, so I thought, ‘OK, I guess it was tak­en out of con­text and they were just play­ing around,’” she said. “I just let it go.”

Nadia met Miller in Jan­u­ary 2020 at an art open­ing in Los Ange­les — she was vis­it­ing from Ger­many — when Miller approached her and a friend out­side and struck up a con­ver­sa­tion. While she works in the music world, Nadia was unfa­mil­iar with Miller’s career and didn’t rec­og­nize them.

“They said they were a per­former,” she said. “My friend kept on say­ing, ‘It’s Ezra Miller!’ And I kept on ask­ing my friend, ‘Who’s Ezra Miller?’”

She liked that Miller was inter­est­ed in dis­cussing “soci­ety” and “spir­i­tu­al things” rather than talk­ing about the film indus­try or pop cul­ture. “It was refresh­ing,” she said. So, as she was leav­ing the open­ing, Nadia asked Miller to exchange numbers.

About five min­utes into the car ride back to her hotel, Nadia said she start­ed receiv­ing “pret­ty adult, X‑rated” text mes­sages from Miller sug­gest­ing the two hook up. “Which, by the way, was total­ly fine — there was noth­ing abu­sive about it. I’m just not into tex­ting like this,” she said. “I told them to stop, and they stopped on the spot.”

The two kept tex­ting, and on Miller’s last night in L.A., they spent the night togeth­er. “They were super car­ing, super nice,” she said. “I had no rea­son to sus­pect any­thing bad was ever going to hap­pen with them.” (Nadia said she could not share the texts with Vari­ety out of con­cern it would vio­late Ger­man pri­va­cy laws.)

Over the next two years, Nadia said she and Miller con­tin­ued to text each oth­er, but every attempt to meet again in per­son was thwart­ed either by their sched­ules, the pan­dem­ic or both. After plans to spend Christ­mas 2021 togeth­er in Lon­don were foiled when Nadia’s flight was can­celed three times, she began to wor­ry about the strength of her con­nec­tion with Miller.

“They’d been super nice to me, and I didn’t feel good to not show up and to refuse the invi­ta­tions,” she said. “I thought maybe I’ve lost a friend because we’ve missed each oth­er so many times.”

So, with the Berli­nale approach­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2022, she invit­ed Miller to vis­it her should they be in the city for the annu­al film fes­ti­val. The actor had recent­ly wrapped film­ing on “The Flash,” and “The Secrets of Dum­b­le­dore” wasn’t open­ing for anoth­er two months, so they had noth­ing to pro­mote in Berlin. But one night dur­ing the fes­ti­val, Nadia got a text from the actor at near­ly 4 a.m.

“I received a mes­sage, like, ‘Hey, I’ve arrived in Berlin, but I might have to go tomor­row,’” she said. Miller hadn’t lined up a hotel, she said, so with the city shut down amid the omi­cron surge and the weath­er near freez­ing out­side, she invit­ed Miller to her apartment.

“When they arrived, they were super nice, super polite, ask­ing me if they could come in,” she recalled. “When I said my house is shoes off, they had no prob­lem tak­ing their shoes off.”

They talked. She gave them tea and veg­etable soup. Then Miller began to roll a cigarette.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, you need to smoke this out­side or on the bal­cony. There’s no smok­ing in my house,’” she said.

Miller kept rolling their cig­a­rette. Nadia insist­ed they smoke out­side. Instant­ly, their demeanor changed.

“And this I’m quot­ing word for word,” she said. “They start­ed with ‘I’m a mak­er of plan­ets. Tobac­co is sacred.’” Miller con­tin­ued on a “tirade,” she said, that they could do “what­ev­er they want when­ev­er they want, basi­cal­ly.” When Nadia stood up to insist that guests should hon­or their host’s house rules, “they looked at me with this real­ly mean, stern face, and told me, ‘Sit down,’ like they were order­ing a dog.” Nadia told Miller as much. Their reply, she said, was “Yes, I’m talk­ing to you like a dog.”

“I said, ‘OK, if you talk to me like this, it’s time for you to go,’” she said.

But Miller didn’t. Instead, they esca­lat­ed, accus­ing Nadia of being “trans­pho­bic” and a “Nazi.”

“I asked them if they remem­ber I told them I’m a descen­dant of Holo­caust sur­vivors, so why would they say that to me?” she said. “They answered, scream­ing at me, ‘Yes, but how many peo­ple of my fam­i­ly died?’ Because many peo­ple in their fam­i­ly died. I was like, Oh, OK, this is a game of who’s got the most trauma.”

So, Nadia dis­en­gaged. “The only thing I said to them was ‘Leave my house. Go away. Go away. Leave. Can you leave now?’” she said. “Like a bro­ken record.”

Miller per­sist­ed, stalk­ing her apart­ment. “I told them I was call­ing the police because they were refus­ing to leave,” she said. “And while I was call­ing the police, Ezra was call­ing the police — or pre­tend­ing to call the police. I don’t know.”

Miller entered Nadia’s bed­room, and when she told them to leave, “they start­ed to shout that they were a rape sur­vivor and I was trig­ger­ing them,” she said. “They start­ed to say I had assault­ed them. I had beat them up. I had hurt them.”

Final­ly, Nadia was able to block Miller near the entrance to her apart­ment with her body, and said out loud that she was sur­prised the police hadn’t arrived yet. Miller final­ly gath­ered their things and left. Nadia called the police to tell them not to both­er com­ing, put her cell­phone and door buzzer on silent and set about clean­ing up her apartment.

“I thought it was over, but it was not,” she said.

About 30 min­utes lat­er, at near­ly 6 a.m., Nadia heard a loud bang­ing noise at the front door of her apart­ment build­ing. When she looked out­side, she could see Miller at the door seem­ing­ly attempt­ing to break it down, and said they were scream­ing that Nadia had stolen their pass­port and mon­ey. She then dis­cov­ered Miller had left behind a sec­ond jack­et in her apart­ment, which did con­tain Miller’s pass­port and cred­it card. She threw down the jack­et to Miller from her bal­cony and went back inside. At that point Nadia real­ized Miller had texted her just min­utes ear­li­er, but she said she didn’t see the texts until days lat­er, when she reviewed them with a social work­er. (The social work­er con­firmed see­ing the texts with Nadia to Vari­ety.)

It was an alarm­ing excla­ma­tion point on what had already been a fright­en­ing expe­ri­ence. “I did not feel safe,” Nadia said.

All five sources who cor­rob­o­rat­ed Nadia’s account with Vari­ety said they spoke with her very soon after — in one case, the day after — her alleged encounter with Miller. Only Nadia’s lawyer could recall Nadia telling him that Miller had declared that they were a “mak­er of plan­ets” and that “tobac­co is sacred.” All the sources were deeply trou­bled by what Nadia relat­ed to them about her alleged experience.

“I was wor­ried,” said one of Nadia’s friends. “I think she was mis­led — she had a mem­o­ry of them from when they had time in L.A., and what she got [in Berlin] was real­ly dif­fer­ent. It sound­ed dangerous.”

Nadia said she has not seen Miller since that night, and she blocked their num­ber on her phone. But she was deeply shak­en. “One of the rea­sons I did not feel safe is after they left, I Googled Ezra to see maybe some­thing is going on with them,” she said. “And I saw a report in the press that they made some sort of death threats to KKK mem­bers via Instagram.”

On Jan. 27, the actor post­ed a mes­sage on video “for the Beulav­ille chap­ter of the North Car­oli­na Ku Klux Klan.”

“Look, if y’all want to die, I sug­gest just killing your­selves with your own guns, okay?” Miller con­tin­ued in the video. (The actor has since deac­ti­vat­ed that Insta­gram account.) “Oth­er­wise, keep doing exact­ly what you’re doing right now — and you know what I am talk­ing about — and then, you know, we’ll do it for you if that’s real­ly what you want.”

Miller had repeat­ed­ly called Nadia a Nazi in her own home. They knew where she lived and had tried to break down her apart­ment build­ing door. What was to stop them from post­ing about her?

“And then I have fans at my door want­i­ng to beat me up,” she said.

After speak­ing with the social work­er about her options, Nadia real­ized that a way to defend against any reprisal from Miller was to share her expe­ri­ence with a jour­nal­ist. She reached out to a women’s rights advo­cate while seek­ing guid­ance on how to pro­ceed; that source, who also cor­rob­o­rat­ed Nadia’s account, put her in touch with Vari­ety.

For the Ice­landic bar­tender Reynir, the inter­na­tion­al atten­tion fol­low­ing Miller’s behav­ior in 2020 rocked his city, which despite being accus­tomed to Hol­ly­wood actors com­ing through town as part of Iceland’s boom­ing pro­duc­tion scene, is less famil­iar with the glob­al appeal of celebri­ty dra­ma. The inci­dent, Reynir said, brought him close to the oth­ers involved, but “thanks to an Ice­landic upbring­ing, we’re rather quick at let­ting things like this go.”

Prik­ið saw Miller just once more after the inci­dent with the woman. Both Reynir and his for­mer man­ag­er said the actor came to the bar with the gift of a stuffed toy ele­phant, intend­ed as a peace offer­ing and still kick­ing around “some­where” in the bar. They haven’t seen Miller since.

Two years lat­er, how­ev­er, fol­low­ing the new string of head­lines about Miller, the actor is once again a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion in Reykjavík.

“To this day, if I see Ezra Miller, I’ll look the oth­er way and keep walk­ing, but I still wish them the best. I don’t want this to be their life,” Reynir said. “I want them to stop going through the celebri­ty crazi­ness that they’re going through and be hap­py. Even though they did all this shit to me and my friends, they’re still a per­son that deserves good things, but not if they con­tin­ue act­ing the way that they have. You get what you give.”

Nadia is less for­giv­ing of Miller’s behav­ior, but also a bit less con­cerned about any reprisal from the actor since they’re fac­ing so many oth­er alle­ga­tions and legal bat­tles. “They’re prob­a­bly not think­ing about me any­more because I’m just one of many peo­ple they abused,” she said.