Rebel Wilson Talked About A Co-Star Who Sexually Harassed Her And Threatened To Destroy Her Career Pre-#MeToo
Rebel Wilson has a new movie on Netflix, which is why she’s been doing so much press lately (see: headlines about her love life, recent 80-pound weight loss, self worth, etc.). This week 42-year-old Rebel is on the cover of People, and in the interview, she talks about getting sexually harassed by a co-star several years ago, before the #MeToo movement. She has spoken about this incident before, back in 2017. According to Rebel, the perpetrator called her into a room on set, asked her to put her finger up his ass, and then pulled down his pants. This was all in front of the co-star’s buddies, who were filming it on their phones. Rebel says that, afterward, the co-star threatened to destroy her career.
Rebel tells People that her new movie, Senior Year, has “a lot of young cast,” and she wanted to make sure “there’s a lot of respect for everybody”:
As she shares firsthand in this week’s PEOPLE, that’s not always been the case. Several years ago, the 42-year-old actress was harassed by a male costar whom she has not named. “He called me into a room and pulled down his pants,” she says. Then in front of his friends, he asked her to perform a lewd act.
“It was awful and disgusting,” she says. “And all the behavior afterwards — this was all before #MeToo — where they kind of tried to destroy me and my career. If it had happened after #MeToo, then I could have just blasted them.”
Rebel has a law degree from the University of New South Wales, so she immediately snapped into legal mode:
“Because I’m a lawyer, I documented it,” she says, “I called my rep. I got certain things in writing about what happened.”
“Definitely amongst industry circles, I made sure people knew what happened,” she adds. It’s still something she grapples with. “Why did I stay in that situation … with that awful guy?” she asks. “I should have left. It wasn’t worth it. But at the same time, I was like, ‘Oh well, do the right thing, be a professional and finish the movie.’ Now I would never do that.”
“I thought even complaining to my agency was a big step. And to complain to the studio. I found out I was like the fourth person to complain about the guy. Such gross behavior, but a lot of women have had it way worse.”
Rebel says if it happened again, she’d probably stand up for herself, “just because of the bravery of the other women that have stood up and now allowed me an opportunity.”
Here’s a video of another interview from last year, where Rebel details the same incident and says that the alleged creep is still working in the industry:
I can’t not know who Rebel is talking about, so I did a little Googling. Back when in 2017, when Rebel first tweeted about her experience, some people speculated that she could have been talking about her co-star in 2016’s The Brothers Grimsby, Sacha Baron Cohen. This is based on an Australian radio interview Rebel did in 2014, where she said Sacha repeatedly asked her to get naked for the movie and stick her finger up his butt (!!!), via IB Times:
“Then in the last scene … he was like, ‘Rebel can you just stick your finger up my butt?’” she recalled. “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.’”
Wilson did not want to do it, so she offered to meet the 42-year-old actor halfway instead. “You don’t wanna be a diva so I … said I’ll slap you once on the butt and that’s it.”
In 2017, the Huffington Post reached out to Sacha to comment on the rumors. He never got back to them. Hmmm. Suddenly Rudy Giuliani’s (allegedly) looking like the second perviest star of Borat 2. ALLEGEDLY.
Pic: ROGER WONG/INSTARimages.com