Producers suing Rebel Wilson ask to delay case
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The three producers suing Australian actor Rebel Wilson for defamation have requested a 90-day stay in the Los Angeles Superior Court. They’re seeking to discover the source of an anonymous website that claims one of them is “an Indian Ghislaine Maxwell”.
The legal fall-out started in July, 2024, after Wilson made her directorial debut, The Deb, a musical film based on the stage show of the same name. However, before it eventually premiered as the closing film of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival on September 15th, she took to Instagram on July 31st, calling out producers Amanda Ghost, her husband, Gregor Cameron, and executive producer Vince Holden.
Wilson claimed the trio had embezzled funds from the independent feature and attempted to “bury” the movie. The Bridesmaids star said the trio acted “absolute viciousness” and with “retaliatory behaviour” as they tried to pull the film from the festival.
She said: “It was not minor things but big things, you know, inappropriate behaviour towards the lead and embezzling funds from the film’s budget which we really needed because we’re a small movie. So kind of really important things.”
Furthermore, Wilson claimed that after reporting the alleged behaviour, she’d been met cruelty, and they “tried to make my life hell.”
In response, a spokesperson for Ghost, Cameron and Holden denied all the allegations as “false, defamatory, and disappointing.”
Later, in early August, the trio filed a defamation lawsuit in California. The legal document alleged that Wilson had behaved unprofessionally on the set of The Deb, including leaving for many hours at a time and threatening those who had funded it to “expose” them to her millions of followers on social media.
They denied any wrongdoing and asserted that Wilson had tried to keep all the film’s screenwriting and recording credits for herself, and her “false and malicious lies” on Instagram were retribution for not receiving what she wanted.
A lawyer responsible for filing the lawsuit stated, “Rebel is a bully who will disregard the interests of others to promote her own.” The producers claim that Wilson “has run this playbook one time too many [and has] jeopardized the success of the film.”
Now, the trio of producers have requested a 90-day stay. Lawyers representing them lodged documents on October 29th, alleging that shortly after they initiated the original defamation action, she sent them a series of emails threatening to “very publicly ruin them”, including one on July 29th stating she was ready for “going public”.
Two days later, it alleges that an anonymous website was registered, where “grotesque lies” were posted, including those that claimed that Ghost, of Indo-Trinidadian heritage, was the “Indian Ghislaine Maxwell”.
“Failing in music she turned full pimp, reinventing herself as a theatrical producer alongside her husband [co-producer of The Deb, Gregor Cameron] while really procuring young women for the pleasure of the extremely wealthy,” the website alleged.
Wilson launched a countersuit last week, filing a motion to strike the defamation claims against her under California’s anti-SLAPP laws. Anti-SLAPP motions are used to protect people from meritless lawsuits that are intended to intimidate or silence criticism.
The case was set to be heard on November 21st, but on October 29th, lawyers representing the producers moved to delay it to investigate the website’s source. Their motion states there was “ample reason to believe that discovery will yield further evidence that Wilson has aggressively spread such rumours about the plaintiffs”. They think this confirms “an inference of actual malice” which would strike Wilson’s anti-SLAPP move.
“For years, Rebel has played the affable funny girl on the big screen and, off screen, portrayed herself as the champion of other female artists and whistleblower against abusive conduct within the film industry,” the producers’ original defamation case claims. They called her a “bully”, acting in self-interest, who they accused of fabricating the allegations against Sacha Baron Cohen earlier this year to promote her memoir, Rebel Rising.
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