We’re still a week out from the release of Rebel Rising — the hotly anticipated memoir by one Rebel Wilson — and we’ve already copped the tea we’ve all been waiting for: WTF happened between her and Sacha Baron Cohen?
ICYMI: Wilson previously revealed in an IG Story that the “asshole” co-star mentioned in one of the chapters of her memoir was aimed at Sacha Baron Cohen, prompting him to issue a statement calling her claims “demonstrably false.”
So what are the claims that Baron Cohen supposedly tried to block from Wilson’s book, you ask? Read on for the tea from the set of the 2016 film The Brothers Grimsby.
“It felt like every time I’d speak to SBC, he’d mention that he wanted me to go naked in a future scene. I was like, ‘Ha, I don’t do nudity, Sacha’,” Rebel said in an excerpt, released online by PEOPLE.
The cover of Rebel Wilson’s book, Rebel Rising. (Credit: Harper Collins Australia)
The Aussie actress claimed that while filming at a Cape Town soccer stadium, “SBC summons me via a production assistant saying that I’m needed to film an additional scene. ‘Okay, well, we’re gonna film this extra scene,’ SBC says.
“Then he pulls his pants down … SBC says very matter-of-factly: ‘Okay, now I want you to stick your finger up my ass.’ And I’m like, ‘What?? … No!!’ … I was now scared. I wanted to get out of there, so I finally compromised: I slapped him on the ass and improvised a few lines as the character.”
She says she then contacted her agent and lawyer about the experience and was “encouraged to ‘be professional and finish the film’… my way of dealing with it at that point was to try to laugh it off.”
Sacha Baron Cohen and Rebel Wilson in the ill-fated movie. (Credit: The Brothers Grimsby)
She claims that she was later asked to do reshoots for the movie, which included a sex scene.
“I filmed the scene, after demanding rewrites. But I still had to simulate having sex with this guy. I still had to kiss him repeatedly. [A few months later] it really sank in that all this wasn’t something that could be laughed off. I relayed to the producers that I would not be doing any promotion for the film,” Rebel wrote.
“The movie bombed, which to me was karma enough. I’m not about cancelling anybody and that’s not my motivation for sharing this story. I’m sharing my story now because the more women talk about things like this, hopefully the less it happens.”
A spokesperson acting for Cohen has since firmly denied the allegations in a statement provided to CNN.
“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,” the statement said.
Interestingly, Rebel shared some of the above claims in a resurfaced interview from 2014 which you can suss HERE.
Rebel Rising is set to be released on April 2.
