Rebel Wilson reveals regret over Sacha Baron Cohen incident
While the passages in question have been redacted from copies of her memoir in certain countries, including the United Kingdom, Rebel Wilson has continued to reflect on her unsavoury experience of working with Sacha Baron Cohen, with the actor and comedian admitting her regrets over the incident.
The two co-starred together in the abysmal box office bomb The Brothers Grimsby in 2016, where Wilson played the partner of Cohen’s Nobby Butcher, and the mother of his 11 children. However, the recent publication of her memoir, Rebel Rising, laid out how the Pitch Perfect star really felt about being involved in the Borat creator’s signature style of near-the-knuckle comedy.
When it was revealed Wilson’s memoirs featured a chapter called ‘Sacha Baron Cohen and Other Assholes’ that detailed the worst moments of her professional life, Cohen sought legal action against his former scene partner for making claims he alleged were false and defamatory.
As a result, when Rebel Rising was published in the United Kingdom and her native Australia, large parts of the chapter were redacted due to legislation preventing the publishing of literary works subject to pending litigation. Cohen’s team described it as “a clear victory” at the time, but Wilson has now voiced her regrets for allowing things to reach the stage they did on set.
During an appearance on Desert Island Discs, Wilson said the alleged misconduct to have occurred behind the scenes on The Brothers Grimsby left her feeling “degraded,” before explaining why she went public with her accusations against the Academy Award-nominated Cohen.
“That was the worst professional experience and that was where it crossed the line,” she said, outlining that making the incident part of her memoirs was “one way to release the shame that I had sustained in a situation that wasn’t great.”
Although Wilson reported it to the relevant people involved in the production, “nothing really happened” at the time. She persevered for the rest of the shoot, but she voiced her regrets, retrospectively wishing she had either stood up to Cohen or walked away from the film altogether.
“I stayed in a situation and had things said to me and stuff that I should have left,” she continued. “The me now would be strong enough, but back then I just didn’t have enough self-esteem to leave, and I thought I’d be labelled as unprofessional if I left.”
Almost a decade later, it became headline news when Wilson’s recollections of working with Cohen on The Brothers Grimsby were laid bare. Cohen has denied all allegations of wrongdoing, labelling her claims as “demonstrably false”.
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