UK and Australia redacts passages on Sacha Baron Cohen in Rebel Wilson’s memoir
Thanks to differences in worldwide legislation, readers in the United Kingdom and Australia who purchase Rebel Wilson‘s memoir Rebel Rising will not be able to read the chapter concerning the allegations made against Sacha Baron Cohen, who continues to vehemently deny the accusations.
The chapter, descriptively titled ‘Sacha Baron Cohen and Other Assholes’, details Wilson’s experiences of working with the comedian on The Brothers Grimsby, where she reflected on the feelings of being belittled by the star, and attempts being made to pressure her into shooting scenes she wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
Baron Cohen’s representatives have issued strong denials and rebuttals, but the mud-slinging between the two has carried on regardless. However, thanks to the illegality of publishing printed falsehoods in the UK and Australia, the Academy Award-nominee’s team have been vindicated – temporarily, at least – after the passages from Rebel Rising were redacted.
Publisher Harper Collins shared a statement with The Guardian, explaining that for “legal reasons,” the company is “redacting most of one page with some other small redactions and an explanatory note”. Although it did acknowledge that “those sections are a very small part of a much bigger story.”
Meanwhile, the Australian and New Zealand additions have redacted the entire chapter concerning Baron Cohen, with the differences in defamation laws from country to country dictating how much of ‘Sacha Baron Cohen and Other Assholes’ can be published in its entirety.
Rebel Rising was published several weeks ago in the United States, where the relevant legislation doesn’t apply, and the redactions explain the recent announcement that the book was to be delayed for several weeks in the UK and Australia.
Baron Cohen’s team described the decision as “a clear victory” that “confirms what we said from the beginning, that this is demonstrably false, in a shameful and failed effort to sell books.” His representatives additionally criticised Harper Collins for the way it “did not fact check this chapter in the book prior to publication,” before taking “the sensible but terribly belated step of deleting Rebel Wilson’s defamatory claims.”
Casting their ire towards Wilson, the statement reiterated how “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.” The situation is far from being completely resolved, though, but those in the aforementioned countries desperate to find out what the chapter contains have been left out of luck.
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