Top comedy agent Kitty Laing is being investigated by her employers after retweeting a number of social media posts that have been slammed as antisemitic.
Laing – whose clients at United Agents include Katherine Ryan, Nick Mohammed and Jamie Demetriou – apologised for her actions and has now deleted her accounts.
She said on one of them: ‘I would like to unreservedly apologise for my retweets on social media surrounding the horrendous attacks in Israel on October 7th.
‘With hindsight, I realise how naive I have been and that much of the information on social media surrounding the conflict is unsubstantiated and hurtful. I should have taken time to consider this beforehand.’’
Meanwhile, the company said in a statement posted on X: ‘We have been made aware of social media posts by one of our senior agents this morning. These are not the views of United Agents Ltd. We are conducting a full and thorough investigation into this immediately.’
The messages she reposted included one referring to victims of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities as ‘fake beheaded babies’ and another suggesting Israelis should not be called civilians but ‘settler paramilitaries’.
Her posts were highlighted by Jewish comics including Josh Howie, who said her posts – and the industry’s slowness in condeming them - showed ‘how deep the Jewhate has set’.
And Lee Kern said Laing ‘has been on a wicked spree sharing hateful crap promoting mockery of Jews murdered in terror attacks & conspiracies that currently Islamists & neo-Nazis are spreading online’.
He added that she displayed a ‘spite and contempt’ for the Jewish people, saying she was ‘disgraceful’ and ‘the worst kind of person in this war: so hate-filled & ignorant that dead Jewish kids becomes a laugh’.
He concluded: ‘The acts Kitty represents aren’t responsible for her actions, but I pity them for her being responsible for their careers. Finally @kittylaing at @UnitedAgents is a major agent at a major talent agency known & followed by countless people in the industry. This stuff has been on her page for days & no one has said anything. They are either cowards or worse.’
However, some Twitter users sprang to Laing’s defence on X, saying her agents were ‘censoring’ her by ‘bowing to the cancel culture mob’ as ‘people have a right to speak about occupation’.
One post commented that the agency was ‘firing someone for being opposed to the ongoing genocide of at least 6,000 people including over 2,000 children’ – although it has not been suggested Laing has been fired.
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