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It was a May morning in Los Angeles, and Sara Jumping Eagle was desperate to get her 18-year-old daughter away from Ezra Miller.
In the past five months, Jumping Eagle said, Miller had left bruises on her daughter Tokata Iron Eyes’ arms and cheeks, restricted access to her phone, and verbally abused her.
Tokata’s parents had welcomed Miller into their lives when Tokata was just 12 years old. Miller had taken a liking to the preteen, flying her to London for the premiere of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” in which they starred, and encouraging Tokata’s musical aspirations. But the Miller that Tokata’s parents once knew was growing more unpredictable and volatile by the day.
When Jumping Eagle learned that Miller and Tokata were in LA, she and her husband, Chase Iron Eyes, jumped on a plane to save their daughter.
They begged Tokata to stay away from Miller, who responded by calling an Uber and demanding Tokata get in. (In a text message to Insider, Tokata said she asked Miller to call the Uber.) When Jumping Eagle reached into the back of the car to talk to her daughter, Miller slammed the door on Jumping Eagle’s arms so hard she had to be treated at an urgent-care clinic, according to Jumping Eagle and a medical report viewed by Insider.
“Ezra Miller, stop assaulting me!” Jumping Eagle screamed.
The Uber sped off with Tokata inside. Jumping Eagle said she didn’t know if she would ever see her daughter again. “I have no way to find them,” she remembers thinking.
She said the encounter motivated her and her husband to sound the alarm about Miller, who they say has a pattern of targeting and grooming vulnerable young people.
“Our primary concern is the safety of our daughter,” Jumping Eagle said. “We want other people to be warned.”
For years, Miller has been hailed as a hero of New Hollywood. The actor first caught the attention of critics in 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and 2012’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” When Miller came out as queer that year — telling The Daily Beast, “I’m open to love wherever it can be found” — fans had found their icon.
With their dark, wavy locks and ethereal bone structure, Miller was fearless in a world of cookie-cutter celebrities. They walked the red carpet in a pinstripe skirt suit with a rhinestone bustier and eschewed city life for their Vermont farm where they raised goats and sang to the caterpillars. By the time they appeared in the 2016 blockbusters “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” — making them the first out actor to appear as a major film superhero, playing The Flash — they seemed poised for next-level stardom.
But in the past two years, Miller, 29, has gone from one of Hollywood’s most promising actors to one of its biggest liabilities. In April 2020, Miller was filmed choking a fan in Iceland. This spring they were arrested twice in Hawaii, first on charges of disorderly conduct and harassment and then on allegations of second-degree assault. In June, a German woman told Variety that Miller hurled insults at her and refused to leave her apartment earlier that year. That month, Rolling Stone published an article about how Miller was hosting a mother and her three children at the actor’s Vermont home; a source told Rolling Stone that the home was littered with guns and that one of the children — a 1-year-old — put a loose bullet in her mouth.
Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP
In June, Tokata’s parents obtained a temporary protection order demanding Miller stay away from their child. In tribal court documents, the parents said the actor had been grooming Tokata for six years and was physically and emotionally abusive. Tokata told Insider that these allegations were “a disgusting and irresponsible smear campaign” against Miller and that Miller “in multiple cases has done the right thing and stood in protection of others.”
A week after Tokata’s parents obtained their protection order, a Massachusetts mother of a 12-year-old was also granted a temporary harassment-protection order against Miller, who she said showed an inappropriate interest in her child.
Insider has spoken with 14 people who had recent interactions with Miller in which the actor exhibited frightening emotional outbursts, carried firearms, or left them feeling unsafe. Some people said Miller sought out impressionable young women and nonbinary people whom they could isolate from their families and control. In some cases, Miller had sexual relations with these people. In 2020, during a roughly two-month stint in Iceland where Miller walked the streets barefoot, rumors spread that the movie star was running a cult out of an Airbnb.
Over the past six months, the actor has been driving around the US carrying at least one gun and wearing a bulletproof vest, paranoid about being followed by the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan, people told Insider. (Tokata said the vest was “a fashionable safety measure in response to actual attacks and received death threats.”) In January, Miller posted a video threatening to kill Ku Klux Klan members.
Several people close to Miller say they’re worried about the actor’s mental state and are concerned Miller has lost touch with reality, whether because the pressures of fame have broken them or because no one is willing to check their behavior. Many of the people who spoke with Insider asked to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation from the star.
“I think Ezra has been enabled because of their fame, their wealth, their earning potential, their whiteness, and their beauty,” a longtime family friend of Miller’s told Insider. “It’s really hard to intervene when someone has as many resources as Ezra,” they added. “When you’re famous, people are less likely to say ‘no’ to you. I think that those things can be really dangerous.”
Those close to Miller said executives at Warner Bros., the studio behind both the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise and the DC Extended Universe films in which the Flash character has appeared, as well as Miller’s parents, seem to have done little to try to get them help. (Warner Bros. did not respond to requests for comment.)
“People in Ezra’s life are really grieving the person they’ve lost,” the longtime family friend said. “Because I don’t think that person is coming back.”
Miller grew up steeped in the arts; their father, Robert Miller, is a book publisher and former vice president at Hyperion Books (now Hachette Books), and their mother, Marta Miller, is a modern dancer. Marta often brought Miller to the family’s country house in Vermont, where she opened a dancers’ and artists’ residency.
Performing came naturally to Miller, who first trained as an opera singer at age 6 to overcome a speech impediment and eventually joined the Metropolitan Opera. A friend who knew Miller at their private high school in New Jersey described them as an outgoing, charismatic goofball who dressed in floral thrift-store finds, smoked weed, and indulged in the occasional acid trip.
Another longtime family friend said Miller “appeared to have a level of emotional intelligence uncommon for their age.”
“They were really able to connect with people,” the person said.
As a young actor, Miller was picky about roles, acknowledging in an interview that they spat on the script of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” when they first saw it. “I was furious that somebody, some idiot somewhere, was trying to ruin a great piece of literature,” Miller said. (The screenplay was written by the book’s author, Stephen Chbosky.) Between acting jobs, Miller played drums in their “genre queer” rock band, Sons of an Illustrious Father, now called Oddkin.
Jemal Countess/WireImage
Even as Miller’s career took off, the actor seemed unsettled and alluded to struggling with their mental health. “The cults of celebrity and the fanatics of celebrities, that’s what governs the world now,” they told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “So, you’re a politician or you’re whoever, you’re just a celebrity with a fan club, like me. You know? And we’re all probably mentally ill. I watch television or the news and I’m like: ‘Oh, it’s my people. We’re all mentally ill together. Cool.'”
By the end of 2019, their behavior, once characterized as quirky, became more disturbing, observers said.
On the set of “Asking for It,” a feminist thriller filmed in Oklahoma in fall 2019, Miller often wore long robes, a cape, and a unicorn head despite scorching temperatures, crew members said. (The ensemble was not part of Miller’s on-screen wardrobe.) Many people on the set commented on Miller’s pungent body odor, and one production staffer told Insider that Miller appeared mentally scattered.
“It was kind of startling,” the production staffer said, adding that Miller seemed to be “just kind of floating from place to place, room to room.”
A few months later, while filming the TV miniseries “The Stand,” Miller incessantly screeched, spit, and interrupted the director by screaming during filming, Kevin Armstrong, an extra on the show, said. A second person said Miller would yell erratically on the set to get a reaction.
At one point, just before the camera started rolling, Armstrong said, Miller screamed out an offensive joke. “It was something to the effect of: A Jew, a Black man, and a gay man walk into a bar, and the bartender said, ‘Hey, what are you doing here? You don’t belong here,'” Armstrong recalled.
Armstrong said that when he complained about Miller’s behavior, the person in charge of extras told him that Miller was method acting because their character, Trashcan Man, was mentally unstable.
But a former associate of Miller’s said things got so bad that production called Miller’s legal counsel and manager because “people on set were not feeling safe.”
“It was disgusting and horribly unprofessional,” Armstrong said of Miller’s behavior, adding that anyone else would have been escorted off the set “immediately.”
In February 2020, Miller traveled to London to film “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” in which they play the character Credence Barebone. When filming for the “Harry Potter” spinoff halted because of COVID-19, Miller headed to Iceland.
Miller’s presence was poorly received by some Icelanders, who said the actor was aggressive and emitted a putrid stench. The actor, who rarely changed out of the same loosely fitting bohemian clothing, strolled the frigid streets of Reykjavík barefoot, revealing long, pointy toenails and what looked like an infected gash on one foot, three people said. One person recalled seeing Miller walking around mumbling.
Miller traveled everywhere with their personal assistant and spiritual advisor, Jasper Young Bear, who told locals he cut off at least one of his own fingers during a ritual ceremony. (Young Bear didn’t respond to a request for comment.) The actor used an art-house movie theater, Bíó Paradís, as a sort of clubhouse, with Miller occasionally burning sage to cleanse the premises of “bad spirits,” staffers told Insider.
For most of their time in Iceland, Miller rented a sprawling, modern Airbnb in Reykjavík’s suburb of Kópavogur. They filled the home with a menagerie of Icelandic artists, expats, and spiritual confidants whom they encouraged to stay there, even though many had their own homes in Reykjavík.
One woman who visited the house for a day in March 2020 recalled several mattresses spread out on the floor and compared the house to a “commune.” She was struck by how enamored guests seemed to be of Miller, hanging on their every word and seeming unfazed by Miller’s mood swings. “I felt like everyone was hypnotized,” she said.
Between Miller’s makeshift commune, their monologues on spirituality, and their emotional outbursts, rumors began to circulate in Reykjavík that the star was running a cult.
Miller held court daily at the Airbnb. They often alluded to possessing supernatural powers, two people said, and instructed guests to participate in group meditations led by Young Bear. They spoke at length about fate and the importance of social justice for marginalized groups. Many of the people who became involved with Miller said they believed in the issues Miller cared about but Miller often took things too far.
Two people said Miller’s celebrity status and power made them hesitant to go against the actor, in part because of Miller’s generosity. Miller insisted on paying for the friends’ food, lodging, and weed. A musician who recorded with Miller in Iceland said the actor handed him 200,000 króna, roughly equivalent to $1,500, for his birthday. The musician said the more time he spent with Miller, the more he behaved like them and believed in their spiritual powers.
“Nobody ever was kind of allowed to disagree with them,” recalled a young woman who said she had a brief sexual relationship with Miller in Iceland when she was 18. “Their reality painted everybody else’s reality. There was no room for anybody else’s opinion or feelings.”
Some guests said they felt frightened during Miller’s mood swings.
A 23-year-old woman who visited the house twice said she witnessed Miller fly into a rage when a group of friends tried to pick which song to play over the sound system.
She said Miller swore and screamed at them to leave the house, which the actor referred to as a “sanctuary.” “They snapped from being a friendly host to this really angry person,” she said. The 23-year-old said Miller wouldn’t allow the offending parties to speak or explain themselves.
The woman who visited the house in March said that when she tried to use her phone in Miller’s presence, Miller got angry. They “would be like, ‘Hey, I’m talking to you! Why are you on your phone?'” she said.
At another point, Miller ushered the woman and her friend into a room and confronted them about wanting to leave the house. “You don’t like my hospitality,” Miller told them, adding that they could read the pair’s minds, the woman said. She remembers feeling intimidated and trapped.
The woman eventually sneaked a text to a family member asking them to pick her up. She said that leaving the house felt like making an escape. “I was a bit traumatized for a while,” she said. “It was one of the weirdest days I’ve ever experienced.”
Miller’s behavior stayed largely under wraps until April 1, 2020, when the actor was filmed choking a woman and throwing her to the ground at Prikið Kaffihús, a trendy bar in Reykjavík.
The violent outburst came as a surprise to Carlos Reynir, a bartender who had formed a friendship with Miller. (When Reynir escorted Miller out of the bar, the actor spat in his face.)
“I thought they were great to begin with. We talked about all kinds of spiritual things and went deep into philosophy,” Reynir told Variety. “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 Miller’s.
When the choking video leaked online, fans jumped to Miller’s defense. The clip must be fake, some argued on social media, or a joke gone too far; this wasn’t the Miller they had grown to love.
That month, Miller rented out parts of northern Iceland’s Hótel Laugarbakki to record music. Several local musicians were invited to the hotel, including a young woman from Iceland who was 18 at the time.
The musicians spent their first day at the hotel reciting pagan chants, smoking weed, and relaxing in the hot tub, they recalled. Later that night, Miller, the young woman, and another woman had a threesome, she said.
Raimund Franken via Getty Images
“My ego was thriving,” recalled the young woman, who said she was “really lost” at the time and addicted to alcohol and drugs. “After that, Ezra basically said: ‘My room is your room. This is now where you’re going to stay.’ And I was like, ‘Cool.'”
The young woman said she stayed at the hotel for six days. What started off as a thrilling experience, she said, deteriorated into one of the most traumatic weeks of her life.
She said Miller exhibited mood swings that left her tearful and confused. “At one moment they would look me in the eye and be like, ‘I love you,’ and be this really nice, beautiful person,” she said. And the next minute, she continued, they would “tell me that I was fucking disgusting.”
“There was a lot of psychological abuse,” the young woman said.
Once, the young woman mixed up the Spanish words for six and seven. Realizing her mistake, she laughed and leaned on Miller affectionately. She said Miller told her to “get the fuck off me” and called the error “disgusting.” Her bandmate, who witnessed the interaction, said he was shocked by Miller’s response.
Another time, the young woman said, she was stretching in a communal area when Miller approached and asked whether she was practicing yoga. The two began discussing yoga. Then Miller started screaming. “Ezra was like, ‘You don’t know anything about yoga!'” she recalled. “This hostile demon just took over.” In both cases, the young woman said, Miller made her feel ashamed for being white.
The young woman said that while at the hotel, she had sex with Miller three times and communicated sparsely with friends and family. The actor became fixated on her breeding capabilities, she said, and worshipped her “perfect” womb by “talking to it, looking at it, hugging it,” and laying their head on her stomach. Miller, she said, believed her loved ones were trying to hold her back and encouraged her to leave her life behind for a more prosperous future. She remembers thinking Miller was her ticket to success: “I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to Hollywood.'”
“Ezra was super manipulative. They kind of had us all under their finger,” she said. “They were able to twist and pull everything that I thought I knew about the world.”
After six days, Miller decided to return to Reykjavík. Eager to get home, the young woman accepted a ride from the actor and their entourage.
When she returned to her apartment, her roommate, who had heard the rumors about Miller and had grown worried when the woman stopped responding to texts, handed her a stack of literature about cults.
The documents detailed how cult leaders promise spiritual awakenings or material goods to manipulate targets and how they isolate their followers by cutting them off from friends and family, the roommate recalled. It was “the exact same thing that I was in with Ezra,” the young woman said, “and that really scared me.”
The woman said she was terrified of seeing Miller again, so much so that she fled her apartment until Miller left the country 10 days later.
Her experience with Miller left lasting scars. “It was only six days, but it honestly felt way, way longer,” she said. “I remember feeling, like, ‘Wow, I don’t know how I’m going to recover from this.'”
As Miller’s behavior became more alarming in Iceland, Tokata Iron Eyes was working through her first semester of college.
Miller has flitted in and out of Tokata’s life for years. They first met in 2016, when Tokata was 12. She and her parents — members of the Lakota Nation in North Dakota and South Dakota — were key figures in the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline, which was set to be built near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. The movement attracted progressive celebrities including Miller, who traveled there with Shailene Woodley, their rumored girlfriend at the time.
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images
Miller kept in touch with Tokata, promising to help her music career and sometimes stopping by her home out of the blue, Iron Eyes and Jumping Eagle said. The family said they appreciated Miller’s help with the pipeline and didn’t notice any alarming behavior at first. “We always thought, Ezra’s trying extra hard to be different,” Jumping Eagle said. “Like, quirky Ezra.”
But over time, they said, Miller’s interest in their daughter intensified. In December 2017, Miller flew Tokata — then 14 and a devoted “Harry Potter” fan — and other Standing Rock members to London to visit the set of “Fantastic Beasts,” tribal court documents say. The documents said Miller, who was 25 at the time, attempted to sleep in the same bed as Tokata but was stopped by a tribal member. Tokata’s parents said they didn’t learn about this incident until earlier this year; Tokata said it never happened.
In January 2020, when Tokata was 16, she enrolled at Bard College at Simon’s Rock — less than a two-hour drive from Miller’s Vermont farm. She dropped out in December 2021 and asked a family friend, Chief Bear Cross, to let her stay at his home in South Dakota for a few days. When she arrived, the chief was surprised to find she had brought four other people including a man in his 50s named Whitney Suters, who was carrying firearms, and Miller.
During the group’s four-day stay, Miller unexpectedly drew a gun, ranted about being followed by the FBI, and refused to let Tokata out of their sight, said Bear Cross and another member of the household, who asked to remain anonymous.
Courtesy of Chief Bear Cross
One cold night, the household member said, she saw Miller having sex with Tokata on a bed outside.
“It was dark, but there’s a yard light,” she said. Bear Cross said the household member told him about this incident immediately after it happened; Tokata told Insider this was “so very false.”
The group left the reservation on New Year’s Day, embarking on a road trip to Los Angeles. At his daughter’s request, Iron Eyes went with them as far as Oakland.
“This is when I was able to see some of Ezra’s deranged behavior,” Iron Eyes said. On the trip, he said, Miller claimed they were an incarnation of Jesus Christ, said Tokata was Miller’s mother in a past life, and at one point brandished a gun in a state park. Tokata’s parents pointed to these incidents in the protection order as examples of violence and psychological manipulation.
Later that month, Miller returned to the Vermont farm with Tokata in tow. On January 29, Miller and their house guests called Tokata’s parents to tell them Tokata was incapacitated after having taken LSD four days prior.
Iron Eyes and Jumping Eagle flew to Vermont the next day. When they arrived, they said, Tokata was “out of it” and “incoherent,” screaming so relentlessly that she lost her voice for several days. She had bruises on her arms and left cheek, they said, and she didn’t have her phone or ID.
Another person at the farm told Tokata’s parents that the bruising occurred when Miller pinned Tokata to the ground and screamed at her for failing to respond to a question, the protection order said.
Tokata told Insider that she took “a microdose” of LSD and that the bruises were a result of self-harm she attributed to a close friend’s death. She added that some of the bruises may also have occurred when her parents “violently dragged” her out of Miller’s house. Jumping Eagle said Tokata was not “dragged” at any point.
Iron Eyes and Jumping Eagle took their daughter back to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As they were leaving, Miller texted them offering to get Tokata around-the-clock psychiatric care if they brought her back to the farm.
Jumping Eagle said that in hindsight she believed Miller was “trying to control everything and trying to keep Tokata in their grasp.”
After Tokata’s overdose, she stayed with her parents for about three weeks, during which they got her a new phone, driver’s license, and bank card. Her parents discussed filing assault charges and requesting a restraining order against Miller, but Tokata said that if they did, she would never talk to them again.
“It was a rock and a hard place,” Jumping Eagle said. “And we didn’t know the extent of Ezra’s manipulation of Tokata. I guess we were naive.”
Courtesy of Sara Jumping Eagle
Tokata told Insider that while she was in South Dakota her parents treated her “like a prisoner” and forced her to participate in ceremonies with a medicine man who made her “inhale my own burning hair as he cut it off my head.” Tokata says her parents told her that she was “possessed” and that if she contacted Miller again, she’d die.
“I felt deeply uncared for and deeply unsafe there,” she said, calling those weeks some of the worst of her life.
(Jumping Eagle told Insider that Tokata was free to come and go while on the reservation, that her hair wasn’t cut during this time, and that no one said she was possessed.)
After several weeks, Tokata made a plan to travel to New York City to work on music with a friend her parents trusted.
Instead, she went to meet Miller.
In spring 2022, Miller became even more controlling of Tokata, said Oliver Ignatius, a longtime music collaborator of Miller’s.
In March, the actor and the 18-year-old traveled to Hawaii. Ignatius, who met the pair there and spent a week working with them on music, said Miller confiscated Tokata’s phone “for her safety” while on the island and pressured Tokata to change her name to Gibson (which happened to be the nickname for her family’s dog, Tokata’s mother said).
“Tokata was very clear with me,” Ignatius said. “She said: ‘I love going by the name Tokata. And I think it’s a beautiful name.’ And Ezra said, ‘No, no, no, you like going by Gibson now.'” Tokata’s only reaction was “deflated silence,” Ignatius said. Tokata, who is nonbinary and uses she/they pronouns, told Insider she goes by both Tokata and Gibson and came up with Gibson herself.
Things in Hawaii quickly took a dark turn. Miller was arrested at a karaoke bar and charged with disorderly conduct and harassment after yelling obscenities, grabbing a microphone from a woman, and lunging at a man playing darts. In body-camera footage of the arrest, Miller warned police officers not to damage Miller’s wrists with handcuffs because they’re a musician. Miller was fined $500 for disorderly conduct and pleaded no contest in return for the harassment charge being dropped.
Hawaiʻi Police Department via Getty Images
A day later, a Hawaii couple staying at a hostel in Hilo filed for a temporary restraining order against Miller. In their petition, the couple said the actor burst into their bedroom saying, “I will bury you and your slut wife.” The couple had allowed Miller and Tokata to stay with them, the petition said. The couple’s petition also accused Miller of stealing a passport and a wallet containing a Social Security card, a driver’s license, and bank cards.
The couple ultimately dropped the petition. But Miller was arrested again a few weeks later, on April 19; the Hawaii Police Department said the actor was accused of throwing a chair at another woman’s forehead after being asked to leave a party at a Big Island house. Miller was released pending further investigation and never formally charged.
Ignatius said that when Miller and Tokata returned to Vermont in May, the actor’s mistreatment of Tokata continued. He said Miller hid Tokata’s phone from her and at one point screamed obscenities at Tokata for wearing makeup. He recalled Miller saying: “What the fuck are you doing? Putting on this fucking clown paint?”
Tokata said she was never screamed at. “That was queer dialogue about a badly applied rouge on my part, which I appreciated,” she said. “I think the fact that a catty comment made by a queer person about makeup being considered abuse is actually quite homophobic rhetoric.”
On another occasion, Miller drove Tokata to a Vermont church that Ignatius and his wife were renovating. Ignatius said Miller “sloppily kissed” Tokata goodbye, “looming very tall” over her in the church’s doorway.
Ignatius said they paused their kiss, and Miller told Tokata, “No abuse without love.” Tokata said she and Miller never kissed and Miller didn’t say those words.
Ignatius said that seeing what he described as Miller’s “verbally abusive” treatment of the 18-year-old was the final straw in their friendship and professional collaboration. “I was misled by an extremely manipulative actor,” he said.
At the beginning of June, Iron Eyes and Jumping Eagle filed additional legal documents meant to keep Miller away from their daughter. On June 7, the tribal court said it was unable to locate or serve Miller and ordered them to appear in person on July 12. That day, the judge closed the case to the public.
In February, a few days after Tokata’s LSD incident, Miller visited a small town in Massachusetts. There they met a mother and her child, who was 11 at the time and who identifies as nonbinary.
The mother was friendly with her downstairs neighbor, who was in a band with Suters, Miller’s traveling companion. On the evening of February 2, the group gathered around a table in the neighbor’s apartment.
The mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her child, told Insider the actor showed an inappropriate interest in her 11-year-old. She said Miller complimented the child’s style and maturity level and asked whether they were interested in starting a clothing line together. Miller also offered to pay for the child to attend design school.
“I want to invest in your future. I want to make you somebody,” the now-12-year-old recalled Miller telling them. They added they were “really uncomfortable ’cause I’m somebody who doesn’t like talking to new people” but said Miller was “pushing and pushing me to talk.”
They said Miller also asked for their Instagram handle.
That evening, Miller erupted at the child’s mother several times, she said. At one point, the mother — who dresses in an alternative, Goth style — joked that she always looked “like a vampire.”
She said Miller started yelling, “Do you want to drink my blood?” and pulled down the collar of their shirt, exposing their jugular.
Miller blew up again when the mother used the word “tribe” to refer to her friends, screaming that she was racist and accusing her of cultural appropriation, she said. She also recalled Miller saying her child was “a mystical being” who was more powerful than their mother and who “would be lucky to have Ezra to guide and protect them.”
Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Universal Music Group
The next day the mother encountered Miller at a local music venue, and they apologized for their outbursts, she said.
In April, Miller visited the local music venue again. By this time, both the mother and the child had heard about Miller’s arrests in Hawaii and said they felt wary of the actor.
The now-12-year-old said that at the venue, Miller pressured them into sharing their phone number.
Miller again asked the child to stay at their farm, offered to buy them horses, and brought up the idea of paying for their design school.
The 12-year-old said part of them wanted to believe Miller. “I did want it to happen. It sounded perfect,” they said. “But it was also just very wary and uncomfortable and didn’t feel safe.”
The child last saw Miller on June 4, when Miller showed up at their apartment building dressed in a cowboy hat and boots asking to buy horses for the 12-year-old. It was four days before TMZ broke the news that Tokata’s parents were seeking a protective order.
On June 15, the 12-year-old’s mother was granted a temporary harassment-protection order against Miller. She said she’d reached out to Tokata’s parents and decided to speak with the media to bring attention to the situation. “It’s about protecting children and bringing light to what’s really happening,” she said.
Over the past year, Miller has continued to draw impressionable young people into their orbit.
One is a 24-year-old fashion designer and yoga teacher named Rosie D’Ercole, who has been traveling with Miller and Tokata on and off for the past several months.
Ignatius said Miller verbally attacked D’Ercole in March on a beach in Hawaii. Miller gave D’Ercole a feather, which she put in her hair. Ignatius said this incensed Miller, who accused D’Ercole of appropriating Native American culture. In an email to Insider, D’Ercole said her conversation with Miller was private and Ignatius’ retelling was “drastically over exaggerated.”
D’Ercole also said her “relationship with Ezra has proved time and time again what a caring, compassionate, and supportive person they are,” adding: “Ezra has done nothing other than try to protect people close to them despite the onslaught of press and defamation; this has been to their own detriment and has been done willingly in order to protect others.”
Miller is also said to be housing a woman named Ana Rosa, who has been living on their farm with her three children, all under 5, since mid-April. The children’s father told Rolling Stone that Ana Rosa brought the children to Vermont without his permission. Someone who visited the farm this spring said that rifles and pistols were strewn around the house and that there was heavy marijuana use without proper ventilation. On one occasion, the visitor said, he saw Miller blow marijuana smoke in the baby’s face and use their arm to waft more smoke in the baby’s direction.
In a since-deleted Instagram live video on June 16, Ana Rosa called Miller an “angel” and said they had “saved my life.” She didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The allegations against Miller come at a tumultuous time for WarnerMedia, Warner Bros.’ parent company, whose leadership was reshuffled after the completion of a merger with Discovery nearly four months ago. Warner Bros. Discovery’s new CEO, David Zaslav, has been tasked with overcoming major hurdles like navigating the company’s debt and overhauling its streaming services.
Insiders have begun to speculate that Zaslav might pull the plug on the actor’s starring role in “The Flash,” which is said to have a budget of $100 million.
“There is no winning in this for Warner Bros.,” a studio source recently told Deadline. “This is an inherited problem for Zaslav.”
Another industry insider said Warner Bros’ best strategy might be to bide its time and see what happens with Miller before the movie’s scheduled release in June 2023. “There are too many unknowns right now,” the insider said. “But nobody wants to spend that much on a movie and not have it have a perfect image.”
JB Lacroix/ WireImage
Some people who have recently interacted with Miller said that they believed Miller was a good person and that their behavior was indicative of mental illness.
Russell Smith, a producer of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” told Insider he was “concerned” about Miller but declined to speak further.
Legal documents filed by Tokata’s parents said that in April, family and friends of Miller and Tokata discussed staging an intervention and looping in Warner Bros. But Warner Bros. and Miller’s mother, Marta, backed out. At about the same time, the bandmate who spent time with Miller in Iceland said, Miller received a call from Marta on speakerphone in which she asked about their mental health.
Friends said they’d wondered why Miller’s family hadn’t intervened more forcefully. “They must be seeing this stuff,” one childhood friend said of Miller’s parents.
In the protection order, Tokata’s parents say Marta has enabled Miller. Jumping Eagle recalled that when she told Marta that Miller had assaulted her daughter, Marta said Miller would have to “be spiritually accountable to Tokata.” Another person told Insider that Marta knew Miller confiscated Tokata’s phone in Vermont.
The 12-year-old’s mother said she wanted to believe Miller had good intentions with her child. The preteen was inspired by the actor’s outspokenness and all they’d done for LGBTQ representation in Hollywood. “They see them as someone who is successful, who is queer, who is in the community,” she said. “My child is thinking that this person’s a superhero — they’re really enamored.”
But those who have known Miller for years told Insider the actor needed to seek treatment and bring back the person they once knew.
“That’s the person that I’m grieving now,” the longtime family friend said. “They were always kind of different from other people their age, but not scary. We were really, really good friends. It’s really sad.”
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