A lawyer for Jeremy Renner denied the accusations against the actor brought forth by filmmaker Yi Zhou, who Renner allegedly had a “brief consensual encounter” with. Both Renner and Zhou also revealed Saturday that they have sent each other cease-and-desist letters over the ordeal.
Over the last week, in a series of Instagram posts and a Daily Mail interview, Zhou accused the Hawkeye star of sending her unsolicited “intimate” photos and video and then threatening to “call ICE” on her after she “called him out privately” on alleged misconduct.
Zhou, director of the documentary Chronicles of Disney featuring Renner, claimed that she had a personal and professional relationship with Renner that left her fearing for her safety.
“Mr. Renner first contacted me directly in June, sending personal and intimate photographs of himself, behavior that, according to public reports, he has exhibited before,” Zhou wrote on Instagram. She claims Renner wooed her over calls and text discussions, saying he wanted a relationship. Zhou alleges they started dating and working together on two projects, including Chronicles of Disney, and that Renner “appears in 80% of the film.”
However, when the documentary was released last month, Renner “refused to make any public promotion,” despite allegedly having entered into written agreements with her production company. Zhou says she appealed to Renner to help her combat fan accounts falsely claiming the documentary was generated by AI without his consent, but he refused.
“When I called him out privately about his past misconduct and asked him to behave properly, to respect me as a woman and as a filmmaker, he threatened to call immigration/ICE on me, an act that deeply shocked and frightened me,” she wrote. “Such behavior is unacceptable and emblematic of the imbalance of power that continues to harm women in our industry.” A rep for the actor previously told Rolling Stone that the allegations were “totally inaccurate and untrue.”
In a statement to People on Saturday, Renner’s lawyer Marty Singer said Zhou’s claims were “false, outrageous and highly defamatory,” adding that Zhou was retaliating against Renner after he “rejected her romantic advances” and did not promote their shared projects on social media.
Singer admitted that Renner and Zhou had a “brief consensual encounter” that occurred in July 2025. However, Singer claims Renner cut off communication with Zhou after she continually sent him “sexually explicit messages expressing her love,” with the most recent one she allegedly sent on Oct. 24.
As for Zhou’s claim that Renner threatened to call ICE, Singer said the filmmaker “had been relentlessly harassing and threatening my client with hundreds of unsolicited and unwanted messages.”
“The true facts are that Ms. Zhou has relentlessly and aggressively harassed and pursued my client for months with no reciprocation on my client’s part, other than a single brief encounter on July 12, 2025,” Singer told People. (Zhou did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.)
TMZ reported Saturday that Renner had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Zhou over the situation; hours later, Zhou responded on social media revealing that she sent Renner a cease-and-desist letter of her own on November 5.
“I am sharing my official cease and desist letters sent to Jeremy Renner and his representatives,” Zhou wrote Saturday. “These letters were sent after I received unsolicited sexual content in the beginning and throughout the months, misinformation about my professional work, and threats involving ICE. These letters show the struggle are about continued sexual images, fans smear campaign and threats involving ICE, they are not because he did not reciprocate in a [relationship] we have been since June.”
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