Walliams rose to fame alongside Matt Lucas in the early 2000s with BBC sketch comedy Little Britain, served as a judge on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, and launched a best-selling series of children’s books.
A BBC spokesperson described the allegations as “serious” and the corporation has removed Little Britain from BBC iPlayer.
Several women have spoken to the Guardian and ITV News as part of a joint three-year investigation by the media companies, accusing Walliams of “grooming” them when they were teenagers. The investigation was published after Walliams lost a legal bid to stop the claims against him being made public.
One of the women now characterises her alleged encounter with Walliams at 15 years old as a “sexual assault”.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Lilly Creightmore, who has alleged Walliams “groomed” her as a teenager, said she was “angry” at his behaviour.
She said that Walliams invited her to move in with him while she was “in between living situations”. She was 18 at the time. She “felt instantly pressured to share a bed with him” but told him she was not interested in him in a romantic way.
After about a week of refusing Walliams’s advances, Creightmore said “he started to become very moody and rude and cold”.
According to ITV, Walliams says he did not act inappropriately and did not “target” her because she was “vulnerable” or “young”.
TV agent Dermot McNamara, who has represented someone allegedly groomed by Walliams, told BBC Newsnight he had informed “authorities and broadcasters” about Walliams’s alleged “inappropriate behaviour” but no action was taken.
Walliams denies all allegations, and in a statement to journalists shared by the Guardian said he was “not a sexual predator” and had not “broken the law”.
He acknowledged that “at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with” and said he regretted not always taking “people’s feelings properly into account”.