Rebel Wilson isn't holding back in calling out Sacha Baron Cohen, whom she claims “bullied” and “sexually harassed” her on set when they worked together for the 2016 film, Grimsby.
The claims began in an Instagram story shared by Wilson last March, in which she called the actor called a heretofore unnamed A-lister and former co-star a “massive a**hole”. Per The Guardian, she later shared whom she was referring to via Instagram in the wee hours of Monday, March 25. “I will not be bullied or silenced by high priced lawyers or PR crisis managers,” read Wilson’s Instagram story. “The “a**hole” that I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen.”
Now, we have more details of the specific interactions she is referring to. In a newly-released extract from the Pitch Perfect & Bridesmaids star's forthcoming memoir, Rebel Rising, shared by The Times, Wilson has compared Baron Cohen to a "fourth-grade bully who teases the fat girl on the playground and tries to make her life a living hell”.
She has also detailed how he put her under pressure to go naked in scenes: “It felt like every time I’d speak to SBC [Sacha Baron Cohen], he’d mention that he wanted me to go naked in a future scene. It seemed to me he could see that the notion of this made me uncomfortable, but he kept pushing for me to do this.”
“You shouldn’t feel pressure as a young person.”
Another source of discomfort was the costume choices Baron Cohen allegedly tried to pressure her into making: "“From how I perceived it, he wanted me to wear a sleeveless top that showed the chunkiest part of my arms and a much shorter skirt where you could see as much cellulite as possible. I know making yourself unattractive is a device in comedy, but this felt personal — like he just wanted me to look and feel awful.”
In a partly-redacted passage of the book, Wilson describes another incident with the comedian – which she describes as the "worst experience of my professional life”, and says it made her feel “bullied, humiliated and compromised”.
Previously, while promoting Rebel Rising, Rebel teased in an Instagram story that she once worked with a “massive a**hole” in Hollywood, which led the Pitch Perfect star to create what she calls a “no a**holes policy.”
“When I first came to Hollywood, people were like, yeah, ‘I have a no a**hole policy, means like, yeah, I don’t work with a**holes,’” said Rebel on Instagram 10 days ago. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah. I mean, that sounds sensible or logical.’ But then it really sunk in because I worked with a massive a**hole and yeah, now I definitely have a no a**holes policy.”
Will it ever return?
She continued to dangle the identity of the alleged co-star on social media. “Do you wanna know why I have a ‘no a**holes’ policy now with people I work with? Well, it’s all in the book,” said Wilson in a video posted to the social media platform before the big reveal. She also suggested that the person in question was trying to stop her from releasing her memoir, which hits stands on April 2. “He’s trying to stop press coming out about my new book,” she wrote. “But the book WILL come out and you will all know the truth.”
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Rebel acted opposite Sacha in the 2016 spy-comedy The Brothers Grimsby (titled simply Grimsby in the UK), which also starred Mark Strong, Gabourey Sidibe, Penélope Cruz, and Sacha’s wife, Isla Fisher. In the film, Sacha and Rebel played husband and wife, Alan “Nobby” Butcher and Dawn Grobham, a British couple who share eleven children. The Brothers Grimsby received terrible reviews (it currently holds a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes) and flopped at the box office, earning just $28 million worldwide on a budget of $35 million.
While discussing the movie on the Kyle and Jackie O radio show in Australia, Rebel alleged that Sacha repeatedly urged her to “just go naked” for a scene in the film, and that she told him she would call their shared agent to “tell her how much you are harassing me.” “Every day he’s like, ‘Just go naked, it will be funny. Remember in Borat when I did that naked scene? It was hilarious,’” she said. “On the last day I thought I’d obviously won the argument and he got a body double to do the naked scene.” In that same interview, Wilson also alleged that Sacha asked her to physically violate him for a bit in the film.
“He’s like, ‘Look, I’ll just pull down my pants, you just stick your finger up my butt, it’ll be a really funny bit,’” she said. “You don’t wanna be a diva so I … said I’ll slap you once on the butt and that’s it.”
Congrats, Suki Waterhouse and Rob Pattinson!
Sacha previously told The Guardian that he ultimately had a positive experience working on the film. “Any flop is difficult. But in retrospect, the experience was fantastic,” he said. “I was on the trajectory of a comedy movie star in Hollywood where you make a certain amount of movies that have to do well at the box office. The great thing about having a complete bomb was being liberated from that.”
A spokesperson for Sacha issued the following statement to Vanity Fair regarding Wilson’s allegations: “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.”
This article originally appeared in Vanity Fair.
