Rebel Wilson has named her former co-star Sacha Baron Cohen as the “massive asshole” she writes about in a chapter of her upcoming memoir.
The Australian actress and comedian’s memoir titled Rebel Rising is set to be published in just one week on April 2, but Wilson has suggested there have been efforts made to block the release of her book.
In an Instagram story on Monday, Wilson named Sacha Baron Cohen as the person attempting to block the release of the book, who is also the “asshole” she writes about in a chapter of her memoir.
“I will not be bullied or silenced with high priced lawyer or PR crisis managers,” Wilson wrote on her Instagram story.
“The ‘asshole’ that I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is Sacha Baron Cohen.”
Baron Cohen and Wilson worked together as co-stars of a 2016 film called The Brothers Grimsby.
In a statement issued to several news outlets, Baron Cohen’s representative denied the claims Wilson has made thus far, as well as the claims that will be made public upon the release of her memoir.
“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 reads.
Wilson has been promoting her memoir on Instagram, and last week, she posted a video of herself talking about the “no asshole policy” that a lot of people working in Hollywood advised her to adopt when she entered the industry.
“It really sunk in because I worked with a massive asshole, and yeah, now I definitely have a ‘no assholes’ policy,” she said in the video.
Wilson said she would talk more about and indeed name this “asshole” in Chapter 23 of her memoir, which will be released on April 2.
‘The whole thing was disgusting.’
It’s not the first time Wilson has spoken about her experience working with Sacha Baron Cohen, or her experiences dealing with sexual harassment in Hollywood.
In 2014, on Kyle and Jackie O’s radio show, Wilson described several moments during the filming of The Brothers Grimsby where she alleged Baron Cohen was harassing her.
At the time, the two actors shared the same agent in the United States, and Wilson told Kyle and Jackie O the alleged harassment got to a point where she threatened to call their agent and “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’,” Wilson said in 2014.
“On the last day I thought I’d obviously won the argument and he got a body double to do the naked scene.”
Wilson also alleged Baron Cohen asked her to perform a sexual act on screen that was not written in the script.
“Then in the last scene … he was like, ‘Rebel can you just stick your finger up my butt?’ And I went, ‘What do you mean Sacha? That’s not in the script.’ And 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.’”
In 2017, during the #MeToo movement on social media, Wilson tweeted about her experience with sexual harassment in Hollywood.
Rebel Wilson has been extremely consistent over the past decade in talking about what she experienced with Sacha Baron Cohen. Here are some tweets from 2017. pic.twitter.com/sJFNX4lcGo
— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) March 25, 2024
“A male star, in a position of power, asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his ass,” Wilson wrote on Twitter.
“All whilst his male ‘friends’ tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughted. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room.
“Later I was threatened by one of the star’s representatives to be nice and support the male star. I refused. The whole thing was disgusting.
“I’ve told hundreds of people in the industry the story in more graphic detail basically to warn them off this individual.”