David Schwimmer has hit out at Kanye West’s apology and called on remaining sponsors of London’s Wireless Festival to cut ties with the event over the rapper’s controversial headline booking.
The Friends actor spoke out after three major brands withdrew support following backlash over West — now known as Ye — and his history of antisemitic remarks.
“It’s great to see companies with moral clarity,” Schwimmer wrote on social media, praising Pepsi, PayPal and Diageo for distancing themselves from the festival. He criticised organisers for continuing to platform the artist.
Schwimmer said West’s recent apology, published as a paid advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, was not enough to rebuild trust after years of offensive statements.
“An apology letter is just that: words on paper… It does not erase years of abuse,” he wrote.
He also questioned the sincerity of the apology, noting that West has previously expressed regret before retracting it and repeating similar rhetoric.
The rapper has also issued an apologetic statement addressing the controversy over his planned Wireless appearance.
Schwimmer pointed to a string of controversies involving the rapper, including antisemitic comments, the release of a track titled Heil Hitler and public declarations in which West said he was a Nazi.
Schwimmer argued that meaningful accountability would require concrete action. “I believe in forgiveness, but it takes much more than this,” he said.
He urged other sponsors — including Budweiser, BeatBox Beverages, Drip Water and Big Green Coach — to reconsider their involvement, warning that continuing to support the event risks being seen as “tacitly complicit”.
In a follow-up statement, Schwimmer stressed that his concerns centre on what he described as a lack of meaningful follow-through.
“I call upon him to take actual measures by which the Jewish community could begin to take his professed rehabilitation seriously,” he said, adding that the issue was “Ye’s lack of credibility”.
Wireless Festival organisers have so far stood by the booking. Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, defended the decision, saying he believes in “forgiveness and hope” despite describing West’s previous remarks as “abhorrent”.
The controversy has drawn political attention, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying the booking was “deeply concerning” and that antisemitism “must be confronted firmly wherever it appears”.
Schwimmer has previously spoken out against West, including calling for him to be removed from X in 2025 following a series of antisemitic posts.
He is not the only public figure to weigh in on the row. Little Britain creator Matt Lucas also criticised West, sharing a post on X highlighting the rapper’s past remarks and questioning whether that should qualify someone to headline the festival.
However, Lucas was met with backlash, with critics branding him a “hypocrite” and pointing to past controversy around Little Britain and Come Fly With Me, including blackface and caricatured characters, for which he and co-creator David Walliams apologised in 2020.
