Jeremy Renner is back in the headlines, and not for a Marvel comeback or another season of Mayor of Kingstown. Chinese filmmaker Yi Zhou has gone public with a long list of accusations against him — with screenshots, dates, and a lot of very specific claims. Renner denies all of it. Here is the situation, stripped of fluff and laid out clearly.
First, who is Yi Zhou?
Zhou is a 37-year-old Chinese filmmaker, writer, producer, and multimedia artist. Born in Shanghai, she moved to Rome at 9, and her work has played at Sundance and Cannes. She also models — Vogue, Elle, Bazaar, South China Morning Post — and she launched a lifestyle/fashion label called Global Intuition in 2019 that touts gender fluidity, sustainability, and cultural heritage.
On the business side, she founded Into the Sun Entertainment in the U.S. and Into the Sun Films in Italy. She has also worked on philanthropic projects, including a United Nations-backed peace campaign.
She talks a lot about her father being her compass as an entrepreneur, and she cites Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Billie Eilish as creative touchstones.
How she and Renner ended up working together
Zhou says she and Renner collaborated on two projects: a documentary she directed called Chronicles of Disney, which explores the legacy of the Walt Disney Company, and an animated feature titled Stardust Future. According to her, their professional relationship turned personal.
What Zhou is alleging
Zhou has been posting her claims on Instagram in a series of parts, with dates and purported messages. She also spoke to the Daily Mail. Renner has not addressed the specifics publicly, but his team issued a denial (more on that below). Here is the gist of what she says happened:
- She says in June he initiated contact by sending her personal, intimate photos via Instagram DM, followed by messages asserting he was single and open to a serious relationship. She says she took him at his word.
- She claims he later refused to promote their joint projects despite a signed agreement with Into the Sun Films, and that when she privately challenged him about past misconduct and asked for professional respect "as a woman and as a filmmaker," he threatened to contact U.S. immigration authorities (ICE). She has said she would not share the rest of that message thread publicly, per the Daily Mail.
- She says she tried to keep a "positive and romantic" public tone for months even as the relationship "turned out to have domestic aggressions," and admits she initially did not believe earlier allegations made by his ex-wife.
- In a post labeled "Porn," she alleges that in June 2025 he sent her two photos followed by a string of unsolicited explicit images via DM and WhatsApp. She also claims other women told her he did the same to them and says she posted four of their profiles as examples.
- She makes a broader, more disturbing claim: that a woman named Lacy Magee died in rehab after being pulled into what Zhou describes as a lifestyle of sex parties and drugs allegedly tied to Renner's home and other Hollywood men. She explicitly states she is not saying Renner directly caused Magee's death, but that it was, in her view, a consequence of that scene.
- In her Daily Mail interview, Zhou alleges one meeting at Renner's home devolved after he had been drinking; she says he yelled for two hours while she locked herself in a bathroom, shared her location with her team, parents, and Disney colleagues, and feared for her safety.
- She also says he pursued her, initiated sexual advances, collaborated on projects, and later denied both the relationship and their work together, telling the Daily Mail: "I did not reach out to him, he pursued me. I didn't even know his name, never watched a movie of his. He used me and denied me and denied our work."
- After her Daily Mail interview went live, Zhou claims Renner changed his Instagram profile photo to suggest any messages to women came from a scam account. She counters that the account in question had 19.9 million followers and had reposted some of her past posts — not typical scam behavior, in her view. She also says he logged out of WhatsApp so he could later deny sending anything explicit, adding that "in the digital era, all the metadata is saved and is trackable."
Renner's response
Renner, who currently stars in Paramount+'s Mayor of Kingstown, has not personally walked through these claims point-by-point. His representative told Page Six:
"The allegations being made are totally inaccurate and untrue."
So where does that leave things?
Two opposing narratives, both very detailed, and a lot of screenshots and claims flying around on social media. Zhou says she has more and is not backing down. Renner is keeping it minimal through his rep. If any of this moves beyond Instagram posts and tabloid interviews, we will likely hear from lawyers and studios next. For now, treat everything as allegations, note the denial, and expect more chapters.