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You may have heard of a feud building between the Rebel Wilson and Sacha Baron Cohen. If you haven’t been paying attention, keeping track of what’s going on can be a little tough, so here’s how the drama is going down.
Wilson has a new memoir coming out called Rebel Rising, in which she called someone she’s worked with an a**hole, causing everyone to begin speculating like crazy about who it was. Then she revealed she was talking about Cohen after his “team” purportedly tried to shut it down.
Both actors have a history together, appearing in the 2016 film Grimsby (known as The Brothers Grimsby in the US and Canada), an action spy comedy/slapstick movie directed by and starring Cohen. The movie was a spectacular bomb and, up until now, had vanished from conversation. Wilson’s book alleges a nightmarish shooting environment that made her institute a “No A**holes” policy” from that point onwards:
“Do you wanna know why I have a ‘no a**holes’ policy now with people I work with? …Well it’s all in the book. When I first came to Hollywood, people were like, yeah, ‘I have a no a**hole policy, that means like, yeah, I don’t work with a**holes.’ I was like, ‘oh yeah. I mean, that sounds sensible or logical.”
Wilson also said: “Because I worked with a massive a**hole, and, yeah, now I definitely have a a**holes policy. Chapter on said a**hole – it is chapter 23, that guy was a massive a**hole.” That sure is a lot of a**hole talk.
It seems things would have stayed private, but Wilson claims that Cohen tried to get her to delete this chapter. Her response? She blasted Cohen on socials and told everyone what was happening to her. She took a picture and shared it on her Instagram story, saying, “I will not be bullied or silenced by high priced lawyers or PR crisis managers. The a**hole that I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen.”
So, what happened between them to cause this drama?
The Nude Scene Incident between Rebel Wilson and Sacha Baron Cohen
Wilson appeared on the Kyle and Jackie O on KIIS FM back in 2014 and said that Cohen kept asking her to do a nude scene in Grimsby:“Sacha is so outrageous,” she said. “Every single day he’s like, ‘Rebel, can you just go naked in this scene?’ And I’m like, ‘No!’” She said her and Cohen share an agent and that she threatened to “call agent Sharon and tell her how much you are harassing me.’”
“Every day he’s like, ‘Just go naked, it will be funny. Remember in Borat when I did that naked scene? It was hilarious.’ On the last day I thought I’d obviously won the argument and he got a body double to do the naked scene.” The interview gets a little more explicit after that.
“Then in the last scene … he was like, ‘Rebel can you just stick your finger up my butt?’ And I went, ‘What do you mean Sacha? That’s not in the script.’ 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 said she turned him down but found a compromise because she didn’t want to be seen as a diva. “I … said I’ll slap you once on the butt and that’s it,” said Wilson.”
Back then, the comment and interview were laughed off at the time, but in the cold light of the present day, it seems significantly more disturbing.
Sacha Baron Cohen Responds
It didn’t take long for Cohen to respond to Wilson’s story via a representative:
“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.”
We’re not really sure where this one going to go next, but Wilson’s book Rebel Rising comes out on April 2 and may yet have more drama within its pages.