Hollywood press tours can be chaotic enough without a little extracurricular activity in the mix. But according to Armie Hammer, there was at least one junket where things went hilariously off the rails. In a recent Podcast episode, the actor shared a story from before the 2025 movie schedule, recalling how he was effectively banned from promotional appearances, likely for Disney’s The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp, after getting the Pirates of the Caribbean star “super stoned” before a press day.
On the July 28 episode of his Armie HammerTime podcast, the actor chatted with his assistant and cohost, Ashton Ramsey, about the “most trouble” he’d ever gotten into on a set. As Ramsey put it:
The most trouble that you ever got into was when you basically got Johnny Depp super stoned before a press [junket].
Ramsey teed up the story by calling it “the most trouble that you ever got into,” recalling that The Social Network actor had essentially gotten Depp “super stoned” before the day’s interviews. The Call Me By Your Name star said the incident had immediate consequences:
They never let me hang out with Johnny on the press tour after that. They would always keep us apart. They never let us do press together. They were like, ‘You two cannot hang out anymore!’
Hammer didn’t elaborate on how Depp reacted in the moment, but it’s not hard to imagine the studio wanting its leads alert and ready for hours of repetitive press questions.
The 38-year-old The Man from U.N.C.L.E. actor didn’t name the project outright, but the timing — along with multiple mentions of working with Depp during the same conversation — strongly suggests he was referring to 2013’s The Lone Ranger, available to stream with a Disney+ subscription. In that film, he and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory star shared top billing, and the Crisis actor recalled that during that period he was “smoking upwards of 15 to 20 joints a day” and often tried to get others just as high:
I loved smoking marijuana with people to the point where they were like, ‘I’m so stoned, I can’t find my feet.
This isn’t the first eyebrow-raising headline for Armie Hammer, who’s weathered everything from highly controversial allegations — including claims of cannibalistic fantasies — to sexual assault accusations. However, those specific claims never led to legal action. He’s spoken openly about the heightened cannibal rumors, as well as revealing painful experiences with childhood sexual abuse and a past suicide attempt. These days, the Los Angeles-born performer says he can look back on that turbulent chapter with a bit more humor. And while the controversy left a lasting mark on his career, 2024 saw him start easing back into acting, with a new Western set to release later this year.
Whether or not The Lone Ranger press team truly had to keep its two stars on opposite sides of the junket schedule forever, the story now lives on as one of those only-in-Hollywood anecdotes, part cautionary tale, part comedy. It’s a reminder that even the most carefully managed movie campaigns can go sideways when off-screen chemistry turns into off-script behavior.
Armie Hammer’s first big-screen role post-controversy, Frontier Crucible with William H. Macy, does not yet have a set release date, but it wrapped in January, so it's safe to say that if it doesn't land this year, the 2026 movie schedule is a pretty safe bet.
