Angelina Jolie Alleges Brad Pitt's Abuse Started Before 2016

By Bindu Bansinath, a writer for the Cut who covers news, culture, and relationships.  Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Electric Literature. She was previously an assistant editor at Harper's.

In 2016, Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt after she alleged he verbally and physically assaulted her and their children on a private plane ride from Nice to Los Angeles. The couple’s legal battles — from custody arrangements to control over Château Miraval, the French winery they once owned as partners — have only become messier since. Now, in a new filing related to the Miraval dispute, Jolie’s legal team alleges that Pitt’s history of physical abuse started “well before” their infamous plane altercation.

A quick primer on the Miraval situation: After Jolie’s divorce filing, she and her company, Nouvel, split the winery 50-50 with Pitt and his company, Mondo Bongo. After Jolie sold her half of Miraval to the Stoli group in 2021, Pitt sued her, claiming she’d violated his contractual rights by making the sale without his knowledge. Jolie’s team responded with a countersuit against Pitt, who Jolie said had tried to shut her out of the wine company as retaliation for divorce and custody proceedings. Jolie also alleged that talks of a buyout ended because of what she described as last-minute “onerous and irrelevant conditions” from Pitt, including an NDA that she claims would have forbidden her from speaking publicly about the events leading up to the dissolution of their marriage outside of court.

In a motion filed Thursday and obtained by Variety, Jolie’s lawyers are seeking to release evidence they say proves Pitt did not allow Jolie to sell her Miraval share to him unless she signed that NDA. “While Pitt’s history of abuse started well before the family’s September 2016 plane trip … this flight marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well. Jolie then immediately left him,” the motion states.

Following an FBI investigation into the 2016 plane incident, Pitt, who was not charged or arrested in relation to it, denied allegations of abuse. Details of the alleged altercation remained sparse until a 2022 cross-complaint from Jolie against Pitt, in which the actress described how a drunken Pitt grabbed her by the head and pushed her into a wall, choked one of their kids, struck another in the face, and poured beer and wine on them. At the time, a representative for Pitt called the allegations untrue and told CNN that the actor “accepted responsibility for what he did but will not for things he didn’t do.”

In her latest filing, Jolie says she did not press charges against Pitt over the 2016 altercation because she believed “the best course was for Pitt to accept responsibility and help the family recover from the post-traumatic stress he caused.” The Cut has reached out to representatives for Jolie and Pitt and will update this post when we hear back.