Sacha Baron Cohen breaks silence after Rebel Wilson’s bombshell memoir is published in UK
25 April 2024, 16:38 | Updated: 25 April 2024, 22:03
Sacha Baron Cohen has broken his silence after Rebel Wilson's memoir was published in the UK with blacked out text following allegations she made against the actor.
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The memoir, named Rebel Rising, was released in the UK on Thursday, following its release in the US earlier in the month.
It features a chapter titled Sacha Baron Cohen And Other A**holes whereby Wilson makes claims about her experience working with Baron Cohen on 2016 action comedy Grimsby.
However, in the UK copies, huge parts of the text have been redacted due to "peculiarities" of English law.
The book instead references "the worst experience of [Wilson's] professional life".
"It can’t be printed here due to the peculiarities of the law in England and Wales," she writes.
Reps for Baron Cohen deemed the decision as a "victory" for him after he denied the allegations made.
A spokesperson for Baron Cohen told Deadline: "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.
"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.
"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."
It comes after Wilson said she was facing legal action after sharing details of her difficult work experience with the Ali G and Borat star.
The Pitch Perfect actress wrote on Instagram: "I will not be silenced by high priced lawyers or PR crisis managers.
"The a****** I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen."
Baron Cohen's rep said at the time: "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 of The Brothers Grimsby."
