‘Massive A-Hole’ Sacha Baron Cohen Allegedly Trying to Block Rebel Wilson’s Memoir
After Rebel Wilson revealed that she’d devoted an entire chapter to a “massive a**hole” in her upcoming memoir Rebel Rising, that a-hole’s PR team allegedly threatened to block the book’s publication. Rather than backing down, Wilson has decided to go public with the name of the comic actor she says is behind the threats: Sacha Baron Cohen. Not very nice!
The warnings appear to be in response to recent sneak previews that Wilson has been sharing on her social channels. “Do you wanna know why I have a ‘no assholes’ policy now with people I work with?” she wrote in one recent post. “Well it’s all in the book: REBEL RISING … oh and YES I name the asshole!”
In the accompanying reel, she went further. “When I first came to Hollywood, people were like, ‘Yeah, I have a no asshole policy, means like, yeah, I don’t work with assholes.’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I mean, that sounds sensible or logical,’” she explained. “But then it really sunk in because I worked with a massive asshole and yeah, now I definitely have a no assholes policy.”
After Wilson caught flak from someone’s management team, she continued to fire shots. “Now the a**hole is trying to threaten me,” Wilson alleged in another post. “He’s hired a crisis PR manager and lawyers. He’s trying to stop press coming out about my new book. But the book WILL come out, and you will all know the truth.”
Wilson identified Sacha Baron Cohen as the bad guy in an Instagram Story this weekend, according to The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets. The two co-starred together in the 2016 film The Brothers Grimsby. And as Variety notes, Wilson’s book wouldn’t be the first time she has called out Baron Cohen for his bad behavior.
On a radio show in 2014, per Variety, Wilson says Baron Cohen pressed her to “go naked” in the movie, despite her threats to report the harassment to their mutual agent. “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.”
However, when it came time to film the final scene in Grimsby, Wilson told the radio interviewer that Baron Cohen asked her to, “Stick your finger up my butt.” Wilson rebelled because 1) the “gag” wasn’t in the script, and b) she’d have to stick her finger up Baron Cohen’s butt. But according to Wilson, Baron Cohen kept pushing. “Look, I’ll just pull down my pants, you just stick your finger up my butt, it’ll be a really funny bit.”
The major Hollywood trade publications have reached out to Baron Cohen’s reps for comment but haven’t received a response yet. Rebel Rising is due out next week, so possibly more revelations to come. In the meantime, if the goal was to stop media outlets from doing press about the book, the threats appear to have backfired. High five!
