As Jared Leto faces a new wave of sexual assault accusations from ten women, a tweet written by Dylan Sprouse almost a decade ago resurfaced with a vengeance on social media, taking on new meaning in light of recent events.
On May 16, 2018, Sprouse, then 25, wrote on his Twitter account (now At that time, the former Disney Channel star was dating his current wife, Victoria's Secret model Barbara Palvin.
The tweet, which has never been explained by Sprouse, received no response from Leto, but did attract a comment from director James Gunn, who asked: "Does it start at 18 on the Internet?" Gunn later deleted his comment, but screenshots of the interaction continue to circulate.
The relationship between Leto and Gunn has been strained for years. In 2012, Gunn posted a tweet that read, “Driving home from Vegas telling stories about what an idiot Jared Leto is.”
In 2015, during a Periscope broadcast, Gunn directly stated that he knew Leto slept with minors, although he later deleted the video and apologized without retracting his accusations.
Three years after Gunn's comment on Sprouse's tweet, when he took over directing the sequel to "The Suicide Squad," Gunn omitted the Joker, Leto's character in the 2016 film, from his script.
The director explained that the character “would not be useful in that type of war situation.” Two months after the allegations were published by Air Mail in June 2025, Gunn also included a scene in the second season premiere of Peacemaker where John Cena's character harshly criticizes Leto's band, Thirty Seconds to Mars.
New accusations against Leto
The resurfacing of the tweet comes after the publication of the BBC documentary “Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret,” in which ten women accuse the actor of sexual misconduct. Four of them describe behavior that the BBC classifies as criminal, occurring between 2002 and 2016, when Leto was between 30 and 40 years old.
According to the documentary, a woman identified as Isabel claims to have been sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17 years old in 2002. Another, Alex, claims that Leto threatened to sexually assault her when she was 19 years old in 2013.
A third woman, Clara, claims to have had sexual relations with Leto when she was a minor (17 years old) in California, where the age of consent is 18. A fourth, Etta, says that Leto began contacting her sexually when she was 16 years old and subsequently sent her a confidentiality agreement that she refused to sign.
Leto denied all allegations. “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he declared in a statement. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”
Despite the allegations, his agency WME continues to represent him, and he is not under criminal investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.
