Rebel Wilson Details Allegations Against Sasha Baron Cohen in New Book
The allegations made by Rebel Wilson about her The Brothers Grimsby co-star Sasha Baron Cohen have taken another turn ahead of the release of the 44-year-old’s forthcoming memoir, Rebel Rising. In excerpts of Wilson’s book obtained by People, Wilson further details alleged on-set treatment by Baron Cohen, and he’s already called the claims “demonstrably false.”
In the excerpt, Wislon recalls meeting the Borat star at a dinner party in 2013 and says that he later called her and asked her to play his girlfriend in the R-rated 2016 comedy, which he also co-wrote and produced. However, once they began filming, Wilson recalled Baron Cohen’s insistence that she strip down, which she first spoke publicly about a decade ago.
“It felt like every time I’d speak to SBC, he’d mention that he wanted me to go naked in a future scene,” Wilson writes in the book. “I was like, ‘Ha, I don’t do nudity, Sacha.'”
However, a new detail from the book emerged this week, in which Wilson claims that Baron Cohen exposed his bare butt to her and asked her to stick her finger in his rectum while filming a scene at a soccer stadium in Cape Town.
“SBC summons me via a production assistant saying that I’m needed to film an additional scene,” she describes in the book. “‘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 continues.
Wilson writes that after the incident, she called her agent and spoke to a lawyer but was “encouraged to ‘be professional and finish the film” and that she subsequently dealt with her uncomfortableness by laughing it off. But her apparent humiliation wasn’t over with, as she was later asked to reshoot 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,” she recalls, adding that the incident didn’t really hit her until 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.”
What makes the situation even more puzzling is that both Wilson and Baron Cohen have apparent witnesses to back up their version of events.
Reps for Baron Cohen—who previously pushed back at the reveal that the 52-year-old was the “asshole” Wilson refers to in the book—provided anonymous statements from nine people allegedly involved in the film, and five who say they witnessed the Cape Town scene in particular. All claim that the butt scene was part of the script.
“As per the script, which Rebel had read and approved in advance, her character was attempting to put a finger in Sacha’s character’s butt. At no point did Sacha actually ask her to put a finger in his butt,” one producer told People. “Throughout this entire period, she was treated with the utmost respect and empowerment and was welcomed as a collaborator in all creative areas.”
Another writer-producer agreed: “This was a scheduled, scripted scene.”
Yet, Wilson’s sister Liberty and another friend corroborated her story and said she told them about the Cape Town scene shortly after it happened, and that it was the same then as it is now.
In the end, Wilson says that the movie bombed, which was “karma enough.” She says she’s sharing her story so more women speak up about mistreatment. “I’m not about canceling anybody and that’s not my motivation for sharing this story,” she writes. “I’m sharing my story now because the more women talk about things like this, hopefully the less it happens.”
Rebel Rising hits shelves on April 2.
