Rebel Wilson‘s memoir Rebel Rising will be printed in the United Kingdom with several passages relating to Sacha Baron Cohen redacted.
The 44-year-old Pitch Perfect actress referred to the 52-year-old actor as a “massive a-shole” within the pages of the book and alleged that he was threatening her about it before the book’s release earlier this month.
She reflected on working with Sacha on The Brothers Grimsby, and he denied the many allegations.
Rebel‘s publishing house Harper Collins explained the decision to remove certain segments of the memoir, and Sacha‘s team responded.
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“We are publishing every page, but for legal reasons, in the U.K. edition, we are redacting most of one page with some other small redactions and an explanatory note,” Harper Collins explained in a statement shared with The Guardian. “Those sections are a very small part of a much bigger story.”
The publication of Rebel Rising was delayed in both the U.K. and Australia.
Sacha‘s team issued a statement to the publication, weighing in on the redaction news.
“Harper Collins 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,” his representatives said, adding, “Printing falsehoods is against the law in the U.K. and Australia; this is not a ‘peculiarity’ as Ms. Wilson said but a legal principle that has existed for many hundreds of years.”
They concluded, saying, “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.”
If you missed it, leaked footage of Rebel with Sacha appeared to call some of her claims into question. See what she had to say about the video clip.
