Rebel Wilson claims 'assh*le' Sacha Baron Cohen threatened to block her memoir

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Wilson said that she had heard other actors say they have a “no assholes” policy where they refuse to take certain jobs if it means they’d have to work with a particularly terrible person. Now, she says, she understands why.

“Do you wanna know why I have a ‘no assholes’ policy now with people I work with? …Well it’s all in the book: REBEL RISING available for pre-order now (drops April 2nd, link in bio)…oh and YES I name the asshole,” the Australian actor wrote in a recent post on her Instagram.

hope everyone supports Rebel Wilson! pic.twitter.com/zusSIhbUHF

— Bella 🫶 (@bella_hunter05) March 25, 2024

Now, in a new Instagram story, Wilson has named names. “I will not be bullied or silenced by high priced lawyers or PR crisis managers,” Wilson wrote. “The ‘asshole’ that I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen.”

Wilson worked with Cohen on his 2016 comedy The Brothers Grimsby (released internationally as Grimsby), and since 2014, has been telling a story about working with Cohen on the film.

In a 2014 interview with The Courier Mail, Wilson said that throughout filming, Cohen kept on trying to pressure her to do a nude scene, saying it would be “hilarious.”

After she refused, he suggested she stick her finger up his butt. “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,’” she recalled.

Rebel Wilson has been extremely consistent over the past decade in talking about what she experienced with Sacha Baron Cohen. Here are some tweets from 2017. pic.twitter.com/sJFNX4lcGo

— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) March 25, 2024

In 2017, she again tweeted about the experience.

“A male star, in a position of power, asked me to go into a room with him and then asked me repeatedly to stick my finger up his ass,” she wrote at the time. “All whilst his male ‘friends’ tried to film the incident on their iPhones and laughed. I repeatedly said no and eventually got out of the room.”

“Later I was threatened by one of the star’s representatives to be nice and support the male star. I refused. The whole thing was disgusting,” she added. “I’ve told hundreds of people in the industry the story in more graphic detail basically to warn them off this individual.”

A representative for Cohen said in a statement to Deadline: “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.”