Rebel Wilson’s UK Version of Her Memoir Has Sacha Baron Cohen Text Redacted
Upon the UK release of Rebel Wilson‘s memoir, Rebel Rising, the Pitch Perfect star’s scathing chapter about her former co-star, Sacha Baron Cohen, has been blacked out. Wilson is from Austalia, While Baron Cohen is a UK native.
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As we’ve been reporting, Wilson’s memoir has been causing a media frenzy ever since she made allegations about the behavior of the Borat star from their time on set together in the 2016 comedy The Brothers Grimsby. In the R-rated comedy, Wilson plays Dawn, the girlfriend of Cohen’s dimwitted Kyle Alan “Nobby” Butcher, who assumes the role of an MI6 operative after he attempts to reconnect with his estranged brother Sebastian Graves (Mark Strong). The film also stars Penélope Cruz, Sam Hazeldine and Cohen’s now ex-wife Isla Fisher.
Rebel’s memoir accuses Baron Cohen of wildly inappropriate behavior on the set of the film. Wilson claimed that he asked her to “stick your finger up my butt.” That wasn’t in the script, as Wilson told her co-star. He allegedly replied, “Look, I’ll just pull down my pants, you just stick your finger up my butt, it’ll be a really funny bit.” Wilson noted in her memoir that she was “now scared. I wanted to get out of there, so I finally compromised: I slapped him on the a– and improvised a few lines as the character.”
Responding to Rebel’s excerpt about the “massive a-hole,” a spokesperson for Baron Cohen said in a statement to the New York Post: “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.”
Rebel Wilson’s UK Version
In the British edition of the book, which hit bookstores on Thursday (April 25), the part about Baron Cohen has been blacked out from the text. Per BBC News, a note has been added to the page saying the redaction has been made “due to the peculiarities of the law in England and Wales.”
A spokesperson for Baron Cohen said the redactions represented a “clear victory” and reiterated his previous position that Wilson’s claims were “demonstrably false” and a “cynical commercial ploy to promote her book.” Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Harper Collins told BBC that they will be republishing “every page, but for legal reasons, in the UK edition, we are redacting most of one page with some other small redactions and an explanatory note.” The publishing house spokesperson added that those sections are a “very small part of a much bigger story.”
Baron Cohen said that the UK publishers of her book didn’t fact-check the chapter about the actor prior to publication, so they are taking a “terribly belated step of deleting Rebel Wilson’s defamatory claims once presented with evidence that they were false,” which is illegal in the UK and Australia.
Other sections of the British edition of Rebel Rising feature redactions but are much shorter than the one about Baron Cohen. It has been reported that the entire chapter relating to Baron Cohen has been redacted in Australia and New Zealand, making the version released in those countries the most censored of any edition of the book.
Baron Cohen’s lawyers have apparently supplied video footage of one scene in question, email exchanges, script excerpts, and testimony from producers and crew members, which his lawyers say back up his case.
The Daily Mail published outtake video footage from one of the scenes Wilson described. She claimed the release of the “unauthorized and misleading” footage was “bullying and gaslighting me.”
Rebel is currently in the UK talking about her book but has not responded to the redacted texts.
5 Pop Stars With Memoirs
With seemingly every celebrity out with a memoir these days, there aren’t that many in the world of pop music that have released memoirs. Though we thoroughly enjoyed actress Megan Fox’s series of poems in Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, it isn’t technically a memoir. Her first book was “written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I’ve spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sins.”
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Musicians connect with their fans through lyrics, giving the general public insight into their personal lives. When it comes to writing a book, however, music artists reveal things that are usually such private part of their upbringing and reveal their raw feelings. The world’s most famous musicians have released memoirs over the years.
RELATED: Rebel Wilson Memoir: Is Sacha Baron Cohen Trying To Block It?
Huge names in the industry like Elton John, Dave Grohl, Bob Dylan, and Nina Simone have released memoirs of their extraordinary life. Many pop stars and celebrities have released more harrowing stories about their childhoods or terrifying tales from the industry.
For example, Alicia Keys’ 2020 memoir, More Myself: A Journey, the award-winning singer-songwriter wrote about her early childhood in Harlem and Hell’s Kitchen. In the “If I Ain’t Got You” singer’s memoir, she explored what it means to be a woman in the public eye and the journey she’s been on to discover her true self away from the spotlight.
From being famous, she discussed the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships and the oppressive expectations of female perfection. Since Alicia rose to fame, she has struggled for years not fully recognizing or honoring her own worth. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she navigated her true identity throughout the book.
Take a look below at the 5 pop stars with memoirs:
