Updated ,first published
Hollywood actor Rebel Wilson has rejected as “absolute nonsense” an allegation that she bullied a star of her directorial debut and denied orchestrating an anonymous smear campaign against one of her co-producers.
Wilson, 46, gave evidence in the Federal Court in Sydney on Tuesday in the high-stakes defamation case brought against her by actor and singer Charlotte MacInnes, 27, over comments posted on Instagram.
The Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids actor is set to be cross-examined by MacInnes’ barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, for at least another day.
Chrysanthou put to Wilson on Tuesday that she had “bullied and harassed” MacInnes “publicly and privately”.
“That’s absolute nonsense,” Wilson said.
MacInnes, a lead actor in Australian musical film The Deb, alleges Wilson defamed her by suggesting she was a “sellout” and a liar who recanted a complaint about one of the film’s producers, Amanda Ghost, in return for further career opportunities.
MacInnes gave evidence last week that she “never made a complaint” to Wilson and “didn’t walk back anything”.
Wilson told the court that MacInnes “confided in me” in 2023, “weeks out” from shooting The Deb, and it felt like “she was making a sexual harassment complaint to me”.
“I was pretty shocked by it,” Wilson said. “I had a very friendly professional relationship with Ms Ghost.
“This is such a fun, girl-power movie, and the worst thing that could have fallen into my lap at that point is a sexual harassment complaint from a lead actress against a producer.”
She alleges MacInnes later “changed her story” and is seeking to prove that this is true to the civil standard, on the balance of probabilities.
Wilson denies mistreating women
Wilson denied a suggestion by Chrysanthou that she had “mistreated a number of women” who worked on The Deb. There were no complaints during the production of the film or “at any time in my 25-year career”, she said.
She said she would accept she was “not a fan” of Hannah Reilly, the writer of The Deb, after the pair fell out over the writing credits for the film. But she denied bullying Reilly and Ghost, and denied she hated Reilly.
“Do you remember sending a text message effectively saying she [Reilly] should go f— herself?” Chrysanthou asked. “No,” Wilson replied.
“As you sit here, truthfully, do you still say that you regard yourself as a champion of women?” Chrysanthou asked, in a reference to a statement Wilson made in her written evidence.
“Yes,” Wilson said.
The Finding Nemo post
Chrysanthou also grilled Wilson about a social media post by her wife that sparked controversy in court on Friday.
The Instagram story included an image of a character from the animated film Finding Nemo, a forgetful fish called Dory, above the words “I suffer from short-term memory loss … or do I? I can’t remember.”
Chrysanthou put to Wilson that “your wife was mocking my client”, who had been giving evidence. Wilson said her wife was “literally about to give birth” and she assumed the comment was about “pregnancy brain”.
“It’s interesting that she [MacInnes] thought it referred to her,” Wilson said.
Asked if her wife, Ramona Agruma-Wilson, had been watching court remotely, Wilson said: “I don’t think so. She’s in America.”
Alleged smear campaign
Wilson was also questioned about whether she was involved in anonymous smear websites published about Ghost in 2024. In an apparent reference to MacInnes, one of the websites contained a claim that an unnamed actor had been rewarded “for remaining silent about the abuse she suffered at Ghost’s hands”.
Chrysanthou put to Wilson that “from a public relations perspective, it benefited you greatly”.
“If anything, I think it would have angered Ms Ghost and made her retaliation against me worse,” Wilson said.
According to documents filed by MacInnes’ lawyers in court, in August 2024 American publicist Melissa Nathan of The Agency Group PR texted Katie Case, who worked at the PR agency at the time, and said: “Rebel wants a one [sic] of those sites.”
Justin Baldoni, the actor at the centre of a long-running legal feud with Hollywood star Blake Lively, also engaged Nathan to work for him.
Wilson told the court her now-former lawyer in California, Bryan Freedman, engaged Nathan and her agency “to work on my case”. This was a reference to a defamation lawsuit brought against her by Ghost and others in the US.
“She was doing crisis PR work for you,” Chrysanthou said.
“It was in relation to the lawsuit,” Wilson said.
Wilson said she could “see how people might say I am somehow associated” in the sites, but she maintained she was not involved.
Chrysanthou alleged Wilson’s denials of any involvement in the websites were “all false”.
“No,” Wilson said.
The Instagram posts
Wilson made the comments at the centre of the lawsuit in Instagram stories between September 2024 and July last year.
She suggested MacInnes made “a complaint to me as director” that Ghost “asked her to have a bath and shower with her and it made her feel uncomfortable”, but the young actor later “changed her story” to advance her career. MacInnes denies the claims.
Neither woman was named in that Instagram story, but it contained identifying information.
There is no dispute that MacInnes and Ghost shared a bath on September 5, 2023, while they were wearing their swimming costumes.
MacInnes and Ghost say it was in response to a medical episode in which Ghost had a reaction to cold water after swimming at Bondi Beach. At the time, the pair were staying at a rented Bondi apartment – along with Ghost’s assistant, who was head of music at Ghost’s production company – during rehearsals for The Deb.
Text messages tendered in court reveal that Wilson and Ghost discussed MacInnes shortly after the incident.
“Charlotte says all good. She just meant ‘it was a bizarre situation’ not that she felt personally uncomfortable x,” Wilson texted Ghost on September 7, 2023.
Ghost texted back: “Oh thank f— for that!!” She added “OMG”, “that’s hilarious”, and “I nearly died” in a string of follow-up messages.
But Wilson raised the incident again some weeks later. Chrysanthou has alleged that was done as “leverage” in a commercial dispute rather than out of concern for the young actor, which Wilson denies.
Wilson is now involved in a welter of legal disputes with the film’s co-producers, including Ghost.
The Deb was released on April 9, less than a fortnight before the trial started.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
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