After finding himself an unwilling major selling point of Rebel Wilson‘s memoir Rebel Rising, Sacha Baron Cohen is feeling a bit of vindication tonight. When the UK version of the book is published tomorrow, the chapter about him will be largely redacted, this after Baron Cohen’s attorneys threatened to sue Harper Collins over allegations his camp has maintained were provably false. She has been beating on Baron Cohen like he owed her money for the past month, alleging outrageous treatment by him toward her on the set of the 2016 film The Brothers Grimsby. Wilson has not relented in public comments, but it looks like the publisher wasn’t taking any chances.
Said a spokesperson for Baron Cohen: “Harper Collins did not fact check this chapter in the book prior to publication and took the sensible but terribly belated step of deleting Rebel Wilson’s defamatory claims once presented with evidence that they were false. Printing falsehoods is against the law in the UK and Australia; this is not a “peculiarity” as Ms. Wilson said, but a legal principle that has existed for many hundreds of years. This is a clear victory for Sacha Baron Cohen and confirms what we said from the beginning – that this is demonstrably false, in a shameful and failed effort to sell books.”
This is what SBC’s camp has said since Wilson first lashed out at him: “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.”
Since the whole dust up has probably moved a lot of books for Wilson at Baron Cohen’s expense, here’s hoping the latest chapter prompts people to go back and give The Brothers Grimsby a second look. While the film failed to become a box office hit, it had some uproariously funny moments, in a There’s Something About Mary manner.
