Rebel Wilson is slamming what she has labeled a “bogus defamation suit” brought by the producers of her directorial debut — who are now questioning the veracity of the sexual harassment allegations she recently leveled against Sacha Baron Cohen.
In addition to denying Wilson’s allegations of embezzlement and sexual harassment during production on “The Deb,” producers on Monday amended their initial suit, filed earlier this month, to accuse the 44-year-old “Pitch Perfect” star of having “a history of fabricating false and malicious lies to hide her own lack of professionalism.”
The feud reportedly stems from Wilson’s gripe over credits on both the script and music for “The Deb,” which is currently slated to have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Despite Wilson’s bid for a full screenplay credit, the Australian Writers Guild only afforded her an “additional writing by” credit while Hannah Reilly is listed as the film’s only screenwriter, per Variety.
Producers Vince Holden, Amanda Ghost and Gregor Cameron — represented by a trio of attorneys including Camille Vasquez, who successfully represented Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard — also claim in the updated suit that Wilson sought writing credit for the film’s music.
They allege the actress “demanded that Plaintiffs provide her a record label with an external music group (a demand which was well outside of Plaintiff’s power to provide),” according to Variety, which recently reported on a letter of demands written by Wilson in June.
The initial suit was filed after Wilson posted a video on July 10, publicly naming the producers and accusing them of “bad behavior” and trying to stop “The Deb” from premiering at TIFF.
The amended complaint claims that, when all else failed her, Wilson “revived a fictitious story about Ms. Ghost sexually harassing a lead actor in ‘The Deb’ that has absolutely no basis in reality, as the actor that is the subject of defamatory tale has repeatedly confirmed.”
In her memoir, “Rebel Rising,” released in April, Wilson similarly accused “a–hole” Sacha Baron Cohen, 52, of having acted inappropriately toward her during the making of “The Brothers Grimsby” in 2016. The “Borat” star denied her claims.
“The Deb” producers pointed to those “false allegations” — and the fact that the Cohen portion of the memoir was redacted in the U.K. and Australian versions of the book — attempting to highlight Wilson’s history of “play[ing] the victim in order to elicit public sympathy in the hope that it would advance her professional self-interest.”
On her Instagram story Tuesday afternoon, Wilson called on billionaire Len Blavatnik to “please stop funding and protecting Amanda Ghost, Gregor Cameron and Vince Holden.”
“Clearly these recent press articles and constant retaliations against me for speaking the truth on my small Australian movie are FALSE,” Wilson captioned a video of herself being applauded, presumably by the film’s crew. “All I did was tell the truth about these ‘absolute f–wits’ — now they launch a bogus defamation suit and bogus articles to inflict further harm.”
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