Filmmaker Yi Zhou is standing by her accusations against actor Jeremy Renner, who has denied sending her “unsolicited” sexual images of himself and threatening to report her to ICE.
Zhou, who worked on the documentary “Chronicles of Disney” with Renner, dropped the bombshell allegations against him this week in a series of Instagram posts. In one, she wrote that the 54-year-old “Mayor of Kingstown” actor first contacted her in June by sending her “a string of unwanted / unsolicited pornographic images of himself” through WhatsApp and direct messaging.
The filmmaker posted screenshots of her alleged interactions with Renner on her Instagram page along with photos taken with him, stating in a later post the images are “facts” and she has the “metadata saved.”
Then, in an interview with the Daily Mail published Thursday, she accused the actor of getting drunk and yelling for two hours during a discussion about the documentary at his home. She told the outlet she had to lock herself in a room to be safe, “praying he would not come into the room at night as he was really angry.”
She added, “I did not say a word, I was so scared for my life.”
Zhou’s allegations share some similarities to accusations from Renner’s ex-wife, Sonni Pacheco, who in a 2019 divorce proceeding claimed he threatened to kill her. Renner called the incident “one-sided” at the time, and in July told The Guardian, “It’s all the salaciousness that happens out there. It’s clickbait, and it hurts my feelings and it dehumanizes people.”
Zhou wrote in another post, “When I called him out privately about his past misconduct and asked him to behave properly, to respect me as a woman and as a filmmaker, he threatened to call immigration/ICE on me, an act that deeply shocked and frightened me.” On Saturday, Zhou shared a cease-and-desist letter.
A spokesperson for Renner told Variety, “the allegations being made are totally inaccurate and untrue.”
The actor’s attorney Marty Singer also denied Zhou’s claims, labeling them “false, outrageous and highly defamatory” in a statement to People. Singer also accused Zhou of retaliating against his client after he “rejected her romantic advances.”
Singer claimed Zhou and Renner only met twice, once in July at a hotel in Reno, Nevada, where they had a “brief consensual encounter.” Zhou said in an Instagram post on Saturday that their first physical encounter was “not consensual,” adding that “later interactions became consensual, yet the earlier incident remained deeply distressing.”
Renner’s attorney told People the two met again in August, adding that his client has not spoken to Zhou in over a month and has ignored her “sexually explicit messages expressing her love.”
“The true facts are that Ms. Zhou has relentlessly and aggressively harassed and pursued my client for months with no reciprocation on my client’s part, other than a single brief encounter on July 12, 2025,” Singer told People.
Renner’s legal team has sent Zhou a cease-and-desist letter of their own, accusing her of “defamatory communications” and threatening her with legal action if she continues to post “false, fabricated and salacious lies,” according to the outlet.
The letter, reviewed by People, alleged Zhou “aggressively pursued a sexual/romantic/sexting relationship” with Renner and “has manufactured fake and outlandish claims ... to generate publicity”
However, Zhou continued to post on Saturday, responding to People’s article saying “many women have spoken up about Jeremy Renner’s misconduct.”
“My intention is not retaliation but transparency,” Zhou wrote on Saturday.