The UK edition of Rebel Wilson’s new book will feature a censored version of her account of working with Sacha Baron Cohen.
Last month, the Pitch Perfect star made headlines when she posted a cryptic video on Instagram, in which she teased that a chapter of her new memoir Rebel Rising would see her speaking about an undisclosed “asshole” co-star.
She later named the actor in question as Sacha Baron Cohen, with whom she appeared in the 2016 comedy Grimsby.
At the time, a spokesperson for the Borat creator told HuffPost UK: “While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage, and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production...”
The Guardian has now reported that a chapter of Rebel’s book titled Sacha Baron Cohen And Other Assholes reads: “SBC summoned me via a production assistant saying that I was needed to film an additional scene. What followed was the worst experience of my professional life. An incident that left me feeling bullied, humiliated, and compromised.
“It can’t be printed here due to peculiarities of the law in England and Wales.”
According to the news outlet, the rest of the page is “blacked out”, as are select sentences in the remainder of the chapter.
UK publisher HarperCollins told The Guardian: “We are publishing every page, but for legal reasons, in the UK edition, we are redacting most of one page with some other small redactions and an explanatory note. Those sections are a very small part of a much bigger story.”
Meanwhile, Sacha’s representative said: “[HarperCollins] did not fact check this chapter in the book prior to publication and took the sensible but terribly belated step of deleting Rebel Wilson’s defamatory claims once presented with evidence that they were false.
“Printing falsehoods is against the law in the UK and Australia; this is not a ‘peculiarity’ as Ms Wilson said, but a legal principle that has existed for many hundreds of years.”
They added: “This is a clear victory for Sacha Baron Cohen and confirms what we said from the beginning – that this is demonstrably false, in a shameful and failed effort to sell books.”
Rebel recently told The Times she felt “disrespected” and “humiliated” on the set of Grimsby due to her appearance, claiming she felt “like I was something to be laughed at and degraded because of my size”, and that her character was “demeaned” in certain scenes.
The Times noted that Sacha had “refuted” his former co-star’s version of events.
Rebel first opened up about her working relationship with Sacha during a 2014 radio interview with KIIS FM.
“Sacha is so outrageous,” she said at the time, as reported by Australia’s Courier Mail outlet.
“Every single day he’s like, ‘Rebel, can you just go naked in this scene?’ And I’m like, ‘No!’.”
She continued: “On the last day I thought I’d obviously won the argument and he got a body double to do the naked scene.
“Then in the last scene ... he was like, ‘Rebel can you just stick your finger up my butt?’ And I went, ‘What do you mean Sacha? That’s not in the script.’
“And he’s like, ‘Look, I’ll just pull down my pants, you just stick your finger up my butt, it’ll be a really funny bit’.”
Rebel concluded: “You don’t wanna be a diva so I [said] I’ll slap you once on the butt and that’s it.”
