Rebel Wilson says Brothers Grimsby costumes were chosen to humiliate her
Wilson previously claimed that her co-star, Sacha Baron Cohen, tried to block the release of her upcoming memoir
Aux News Grimsby
Last week, Rebel Wilson caused a stir when she named Sacha Baron Cohen as the “massive asshole” who caused her to institute a “no assholes” policy after the two starred in the 2016 spy flop The Brothers Grimsby together. In an Instagram post, she also alleged that Cohen had sent lawyers and PR people to block the release of her upcoming memoir, Rebel Rising, in which she dedicates an entire chapter to her negative experiences with the Borat actor. (Cohen’s reps refuted Wilson’s claims in a subsequent statement to The A.V. Club).
But Cohen’s efforts aren’t stopping Wilson from either releasing her memoir (out April 2), or telling The Times even more about how “disrespected” she felt filming The Brothers Grimsby, which she said “turned out to be the worst professional experience of my career.”
Cohen was one of Wilson’s comedy heroes before everything went down, which made saying yes to the role an easy decision for her. But while she had poked fun at her own size before—who can forget Pitch Perfect’s “Fat Amy” and her horizontal running—this time felt different. “It’s one thing for someone who is fat to exploit their size for comedy, but it’s another for somebody else to humiliate you,” Wilson said, explaining that she felt her costumes were chosen to “see all the cellulite on my thighs and a top to show the fattest part of my arm.” “I was something to be laughed at and degraded because of my size,” she added.
In a statement to The A.V. Club, a spokesperson for a Brother’s Grimsby producer challenged Wilson’s claims, writing that she was “welcomed as a collaborator in all creative areas; the script, costume, hair, makeup” and she “enthusiastically contributed to making jokes … about Dawn’s body type.”
In her Times interview, Wilson also elaborated on claims she’s maintained since at least 2014—before the film was even released—that Cohen tried to coerce her into filming a nude scene even though she continually refused and had a no-nudity clause in her contract. Eventually, according to The Times, a sex worker was hired to film the scene, but Wilson was still made to watch on the monitor. In that moment, she felt the character was being “demeaned,” she said. After, she never promoted the film and still hasn’t been able to watch it all these years later.
“It took months to recover,” she concluded. “I’m sharing my story now because the more women talk about things like this, hopefully the less it happens. And hopefully fewer women have to work harder just to respect themselves.”
This post has been updated to include a statement from a Brother’s Grimsby producer.
125 Comments
imagine reading two articles and deciding you’ll need to buy this book to confirm it was a bad idea to work on the Brorhers Grimsby.
What, you aren’t aching for more details??I have forever found her incredibly off-putting, starting with Bridesmaids.
‘”What, you aren’t aching for more details??I have forever found her incredibly off-putting, starting with Bridesmaids.”’Wait, was she in Bridesmaids? I thought that was Melissa McCarthy…
She had a small supporting role in Bridesmaids as one of Wiig’s weird British roommates (the other was played by one of the Little Britain guys). While it didn’t quite steal the film like McCarthy’s performance, it did garner enough attention that it led to her getting roles like Pitch Perfect.
She’s Wiig’s roommate and is just gross.
Briefly. She played Kirsten Wiig’s roommate. She wasnt a bridesmaid, i dont think.
Agreed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in anything (including interviews) where I thought she was funny or even that likeable. She was one-trick as an actress. She happily played “the dumb fat girl” and that is presumably why they cast her in the role. That doesn’t excuse Baron-Cohen being an arsehole, but the above complaints seem churlish.
Yeah I have never found her very funny or compelling in the few things I have seen her in. I assume since she lost weight, everywhere but her face for some reason, that she is trying to avoid those types of roles in the future and decided to burn some bridges. Also I find it kind of odd when someone as young as her writes a memoir since I don’t think there was a lot of “crazy” shit behind the scenes of her life like Jeanette McCurdy.
I can’t imagine it’s going to move many copies. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be the overweight comic relief as a permanent career but if she spends the memoir talking shit then she’s not doing herself any favors with respect to landing other roles.
Agree, on both counts. I know very little about her other than I think she lied about her age early in her career, unless there is some really compelling shit in there, other than Cohen, it’s going to be a very boring read.
Pretty sure even Cohen regrets The Brother’s Grimsby.
I’m calling it now: we’re going to see so many articles about this on AVC for the next forever
One article per word in the Times piece.
It’s the new “Don’t Worry Darling”!
The Rust trial was the new Don’t Worry Darling. This is the new Rust trial.
I had to explain the ‘Rust’ shooting to some friends of mine the other day. I didn’t realise that it was a thing some people hadn’t heard about.
That is surprising. A lot of the shit that gets airtime around here is definitely not mainstream news, but Baldwin and Rust have been getting plenty of exposure from regular news outlets.
I recently caught “Don’t Worry, Darling” on a movie channel while staying in a hotel. Aside from the implausibility aspect of the underlying explanation, it was actually not too bad. The Pugh Abides.
it’s the perfect storm: celebrity self-victimization timed with a memoir release and a healthy dose of hot-button issues like gender and body image dynamics.You bet your sweet bippy they’re going to run this thing into the ground and then some
Assuming that Bam Sarbanti’s bippy is “sweet” would probably be considered problematic behaviour what with the objectification of a body part and whatnot. The bippy is a body part, right?
Depends, have they run out of people who can comment on Nickelodeon shows and the issues behind the scenes? I wonder if Rebel Wilson has any comments about Sam & Cat? If she did this whole place might implode.
I miss Madame Web.Wasn’t that a time…
Too bad Rebel Wilson doesn’t have that sweet Laurel Canyon sound. She seems like a lot. Always has. Never been a fan.
Women being treated like this is not unique to Hollywood.
The incidents described last week — where Cohen allegedly pressured Wilson to go nude and told her to stick her finger up his butt for a scene — were clearly inappropriate. I feel a little more mixed about the incidents described here.Cohen mines a lot of humor from depicting people’s bodies in really unflattering ways. Anyone who saw Borat (and it sounds like Wilson did) could not have missed the jokes about how Cohen and Ken Davitian looked. And given the unglamorous role she was playing, I’m not sure Wilson should have been really surprised that her role involved making her look unflattering.Maybe there’s an argument we should not be making such jokes at all, though lots of people (me included) liked Borat at the time. If we’re going to have roles like this, there are going to need to be people to play them, and that does lead to some weirdness where an actor is kind of deliberately being humiliated.
“costumes were chosen to humiliate her”NO SHIT
Maybe she is full of shit and is embellishing things? I don’t keep up with everything SBC does, but has anyone else have similar stories or corroborated this?
One of the best jokes in Borat is that Davitian’s belly hung so low he didn’t need a censor bar to cover his gear.
To me it looks like someone who was torn between the need to accept roles as the “fat & crazy” woman in comedies and the fact that she didn’t like that at all.
It’s like if Preston Lacy from Jackass woke up one day and said “I’m tired of my dignity being taken from me bit by bit just to make money.
Now she’s trying to make a career shift and to sell her book, and dragging another famous person is a good way to get free publicity.
In reality, working with Cohen brought her to a point where she finally learned to say “no, I won’t accept to be degraded to that level”.
Everybody in life gets pressured to do things they don’t want to, you have to draw a line at some point, or just say “fuck it, I’ll do it if you pay me more”.
To me it looks like someone who kept getting offered “fat and crazy woman” roles suddenly got professionally miffed because the gigs really weren’t taxing any acting ability she might have…
While I partially agree as the op said“where Cohen allegedly pressured Wilson to go nude and told her to stick her finger up his butt for a scene — were clearly inappropriate.”
You mean… how he ASKED her to do something that she had previously done to a different co-star WITHOUT their consent and with no prior warning (which she then proceeded to brag and joke about on talk shows)?Yeah, nope… you dont get to drag someone through the mud for merely asking you to do something that you say is inappropriate, when you have previously bragged and joked about doing that exact same thing to someone without asking them first and without getting their consent. She’s a hypocritical dips**t.
Now if someone would only tell Melissa McCarthy that so maybe she could get her husband to stop writing all her roles as the fat, clumsy, accident prone, annoyance. Because unlike Rebel Wilson who has negative Pi personality and is painful to watch on screen, Melissa McCarthy can actually act and has done roles where she actually acted. Rebel Wilson is the same no personality charisma vacuum that wants to sell a book and made a god awful movie about a “cheerleader” who was in a coma for a decade
Preston Lacy is a national treasure. Pretty much all the Jackass guys except Bam.
I’m perplexed on Rebel’s position, here. She is offended that Cohen asked her to do a finger in the butt gage; she wasn’t forced into it. However, during one of Rebel’s early film, she has gone on record stating that a director for, The Hustle, told her to stick her finger in Tom Hardy’s ass, without his consent. She obliged the request, and thought it amusing talk show talk that Hardy gave her the brush off after the incident. That is my, clearly inappropriate. Rebel is on a book selling tour and is looking for publicity, and that is where it gets gross, to me.
The Tom Hardy thing was on the set of This Means War. On The Hustle she felt up Anne Hathaway without telling her first.Cohen is a douche but Rebel Wilson’s closet definitely has a few skeletons too.
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy to make a big deal out of someone asking you to consensually do something to a costar that you have done previously to another costar without consent.What’s the butthole-fingering equivalent of the Streisand effect?
Some finger in the butthole skeletons
But Wilson had established boundaries, like the no nudity clause in her contract. People a generation older than SBC honored those. Sly Stallone would talk about Cynthia Rhodes approvingly saying she didn’t want to do anything embarrassing given her conservative background.Sarah Jessica Parker has never done nudity. Not even in Sex and the City. She’s never gone topless. It’s always in her contract that she doesn’t do that.It’s not okay that women’s ability to have boundaries in entertainment is actually WORSE now than it was 30, 40 years ago. That’s not cool. If someone has a no nudity clause, that should be it. Someone shouldn’t be bullying them on set trying to get them to verbally agree to cross that boundary.
I think you misunderstood the article, my comment, or both.I agreed that Wilson should not have been pressured to do nudity. But the complaint in the current article is about Wilson being dressed in clothing that she left highlighted her size for laughs. She was not nude in the clothing. And I noted that Cohen’s humor features a lot of jokes using unflattering depictions of people’s bodies (including Cohen’s). Wilson was evidently familiar with Cohen’s humor, and knew the role she was playing was not a flattering one, and so I’m not convinced that, in this particular instance, Wilson’s complaint is reasonable.
Is this just a thing with fat celebrities now? They make a career out of being a fat funny character actor for years, then go through this emotional shedding period where they bemoan all the shitty stuff they had to endure as a fat funny character actor?What do you even say besides “duh”? Did you think being the fall-down-go-boom lady was going to be an experience of grace and respect? Or did you think people were gonna look at you and go “haha, she’s fat”?I think maybe Hollywood should stop trying to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to fat actors. Either lean into the fact that the FAT itself is funny, or stop casting fat people because they’re funny to look at but never comment on it.
I’m not sure how you could dress her and look good. She’s taken steps to lose weight and looks a lot better now.
This is unnecessarily mean.
It’s wrong to point out how just fat someone was when they are publicly and repeatedly trashing someone for asking her to wear outfits that supposedly “made” them look fat, in order to drum up interest for their stupid book? Years after they portrayed a character named Fat Amy on multiple occasions?
Her point was they made her look bad with the outfits they chose for her, how is my point mean? She knew she was hugely overweight and changed her lifestyle. I’m impressed she lost so much weight.
it’s extremely fatphobic, you psycho. Keep on writing, at least that will keep you from hurting your family.
Fatphobic? I said it would be difficult to make her look good as her point was they made her look bad. She obviously acknowledged that and lost weight for looks and health. Which I applaud. I don’t hate fat people at all.
I’d fuck her in her mid-30s THIS IS A REFERENCE TO ANOTHER ARTICLE
Shut the fuck up, minidick
Awesome name calling. 10/10.
Just had a quick scan of your other comments, what is your fascination with people’s penises?
Hey, you’re a fat retarded piece of shit and you should kill yourself today.
whatever your body looks like it should be your choice how much of it you want to put on display. I’m not a fan of either of them but that’s pretty basic.
She could have said no to the outfits chosen.
I’m just waiting for the Jackass guys to jump on the victimization train… “The movies made me look stupid and caused me pain.”
So AV Club sold to Paste and Takeout (no longer linked above) sold to another company. See you all on the other side. Maybe. Has this been announced here?https://www.thedailybeast.com/go-media-continues-fire-sale-dumps-av-club-and-takeout
It’s been a week and there’s been nary a mention of it. Contrast that with the “Let’s talk about the AV Club moving to Kinja” walkthrough that O’Neal and Browning put together for the last sale:https://www.avclub.com/let-s-talk-about-the-a-v-club-switching-to-kinja-1798264810It’s like night and day. Of course, O’Neal and company gave a shit.
Not that I think anyone on staff would be up to talking about it anyway, but there is absolutely a “Don’t mention the sale” mandate from above.
It might just be a waiting for the deal to be finalized thing. Paste put up an announcement today: https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/paste-magazine/paste-media-acquires-av-clubI’m cautiously optimistic. Hard to do worse than the herb’s stewardship.
I just read that, and was looking for an appropriate spot to post it here. Could all be empty corporate speak, but it’s nice to have the commenting community specifically mentioned.
They’ve been the home for Dennis Perkins’ SNL reviews since the last big staff exodus when GMO mandated everyone move to LA if they wanted to keep their jobs. For whatever that’s worth.
enjoy commenting while it lasts. I can’t imagine they won’t make it subscription-based a la Jezebel. Also, get used to shitty banner ads that cover everything.
That’s an improvement over the current AV Club ads.
Don’t get your hopes up as Paste is even worse. You have to have a paying subscription in order to comment on new Jezebel and Splinter and I imagine it’ll be the same for AVClub.
What does that have to do with the content?I don’t consider that much of a negative. Defector requires a higher tier sub to comment and it works well there.
You realize that one of the main reasons why people come here and why AVClub got famous is specifically because of the comments section/commentariat right? They even spent an entire paragraph talking about that in the article you linked. As you can see from the empty and dead comments on new Jezebel and Splinter, their subscription model doesn’t seem to be working.
Yes and I’ve also seen how much the comments section has degraded here since the Kinja transition and especially after 2022. There was also a break in continuity from when Splinter and Jezebel were revived at Paste, while AV Club is a bit more alive ahead of the transition. I just don’t think the subscription inherently is the problem. The Deadspin->Defector commentariat migration worked well and their comments section is thriving.
I think the subscription is definitely a problem.Jezebel had relatively robust comment section after it was revived and Paste took over. It was more or less the same the first week back after the hiatus as it was the last week before the hiatus.Now, it’s virtually gone. Defector launched after a long hiatus after the staff left Deadspin, but it returned with a writing staff with a much higher profile and with much greater familiarity. But it will be clear if the subscription matters pretty quickly after it’s imposed on AVClub. I’m personally not a first adopter by nature. If I see that the comment section is robust, I might shell out my 8 bucks a month to participate. With Jezebel, I’d be the only one commenting so I’ve saved my money.
Is it the subscription or the quality of the content not making it worth coming to in the first place though?
I’m not sure if this answers you question, but as far as I could tell there were plenty of comments on the site one day and the next day they started charging and the comments section all but dried up.I can’t speak for anyone else, but there is a limit to the number of sites I’m willing to pay for just to comment. I subscribe to Defector but did that originally to support the idea that “new Deadspin” could succeed and as a fuck you to G/O media. Since then, I’ve auto-renewed and, to be honest, I was/am a more active participant there than I am here or on other sites.I hardly ever posted on J because I was “in the grays” and no one ever read my comments hardly. Now, there are no “grays” but the comments section is more or less inactive.I guess I’ll take a wait and see with AVC.
That’s all I’m really doing. Paste maybe isn’t great, but it seems like they seem a bit more interested in doing some of the feature content AV Club used to do more of. It is mixed in with a ton of lists, but I kinda just accept that’s a part of how the modern internet operates and can roll with it if it allows the better parts to exist.
“Yes and I’ve also seen how much the comments section has degraded here since the Kinja transition”Gee, I wonder why? Hint: in your own words “Kinja Transition”“The Deadspin->Defector commentariat migration worked well and their comments section is thriving.”And I just pointed out to you that the Jezebel and Splinter migration did not and their comment sections are dead. And as another commenter pointed out to you, Jezebel was doing fine post Paste takeover until they imposed the subscription fee. Based off of what happened on both of those places, i’m not all that confident that it’ll work out for the AVClub. Esepcially since a lot of Defector commenters are also current AVClub commenters too, and I don’t see them paying subscription fees for two different sites.
Lots of people pay for more than one subscription. I’m just saying a subscription isn’t necessarily a barrier to a thriving comment section. The comments section here’s been dying for years anyway, so I’m gonna wait and see how it goes with Paste. I at least feel like there’s some hope the rest of the site can take a few steps back towards what it was. The Avocado still exists if you really just want the comments section.
None of this is the point that you keep consistently missing here is that many people sometimes perfer to comment and engage with the community than actually read and care about content, and as we can see from the dead and empty Jezebel and Splinter comment sections show, they aren’t willing to pay a subscription for it, which is the point. The falloff of the AVClub comment section is more because of the awfullness of Kinja than anything. You maybe good with paying a subscription, or even care for a commenting community, but you don’t speak for everyone and shouldn’t.
You’re being weirdly combative over some mild optimism that things won’t all go to shit and an opinion that maybe there’s something more to this site than just the comments.
And you’re being so ridiciously dense and obtuse because you can’t seem to accept the fact that many people come to the G/O media sites just to comment and engage with a like minded community and don’t want to pay for it like you want to. I’m not even the only person in this thread that told you this either. You even linked to an article where they explained how keeping the commenting community was most important to them.You don’t care for commmenting and are okay with paying for it? Good for you. Doesn’t mean that everyone wants to, and the dead comment section at Jezebel is the example of that. Really don’t get why that’s so hard for you to grasp that two people are spending all day trying to explain that to you.
You sure love reading a lot of extra meaning behind what I said. I accept that fact just fine. I offered a take on what I hope the best case scenario would be where a subscription could work and maybe we have decent content and a thriving comments section. Fine, Paste hasn’t successfully done that so far. If you’re happy to just keep commenting on a dozen articles about Rebel Wilson and The Brothers Grimsby, cool. You seem to want to shout me down for that mild as fuck take. Cool. I’m a wrong, I’m an idiot, whatever. I’m done, dude. You win. Take it for whatever that’s worth to you.
And you sure love projecting your obvious issues on total strangers on the internet who had the gall to simply disagree with your wrong and self-centered opinions. It must suck to see that the world and people don’t just revolve around you doesn’t it?
And yes, you are a wrong idiot. Thank you for finally acknowledging that after replying back and forth for the last 24 hours for essentially nothing. Anything else? Wanna insist more on having the last word?
I, err, wat? There’s disagreeing and then there’s disagreeing in the most dickish way possible. You chose the latter. Could have just been a polite agree to disagree situation. You’re the one who started in on being insulting. I wasn’t trying to put this in terms of anyone being particularly right or wrong on this. You made an assertion, I pushed back a little and got an outsized reaction.
Yes, yes, keep replying and replying, projecting your issues and insisting on the last word. You’re never wrong and always right. The world revolves around your narrow minded opinions. Commenting on the same thread for 24 hours straight because someone had the gall to disagree with you on the internet.
I was going for friendly debate before you took it down a different path. Oh well.
Yes, yes, keep replying and replying, projecting your issues and insisting on the last word in the most condescending way that you call “friendly debate.”
You seem to be doing the same. I dunno, half of this was me trying to take it down a notch and wasn’t trying to present my opinion as the only correct one. Sorry you took it all as condescending. You keep throwing out insults at the end and I feel like I have to respond. Problem on my part. Feel free to have the last word now.
Yes, yes, you “have to respond.” The stranger on the internet that you’ve been yelling at for 24 hours straight must know that your ego, opinions are supreme above all and why you insist on winning the argument and having the last word in the form of “friendly debate.” Keep replying. Keep making sure that I must know how you feel in the most dickish and passive aggressive way possible.
and we’ve been saddled with Great Value O’Neals ever since.
I can’t imagine this site is worth all that much these days… I wonder if a few of the better-off commentariat could actually make an offer.Probably a pipe dream, and I should probably stop haunting this site now that it’s become a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of its former self.
I’ve got a couple Dawes CDs sealed in package. Enough?
Sadly the buying power of the sweet laurel canyon sound isn’t what it use to be
Maybe Cohen’s an a**, maybe he’s not. But if you break big playing a character called “Fat Amy” you can’t be too surprised if your follow-up role is focused on you being fat.
Nah she can. You don’t make the rules.
just kidding!!! tell me to kill myself again, cunt.
You’d think a comedy actor would have a sense of humor.
Why? You don’t.
Not sure what kind of movie she thought she was getting into but this is from the Wikipedia plot. Seems pretty damn on brand for SBC.“To outrun Chilcott’s men, the brothers are forced to hide inside an elephant’s vagina, but end up covered in elephant semen after several males have sex with the female while they are inside.”“Nobby’s gun goes off and shoots Daniel Radcliffe, whose AIDS-infected blood spills into Donald Trump’s mouth.”
Nobby’s gun goes off and shoots Daniel Radcliffe, whose AIDS-infected blood spills into Donald Trump’s mouth
holy shit from a straight copy/paste its changing Donald Trumps name to go at the front.
So why isn’t it mentioned in this article that sacha baron cohen went ahead and released the behind the scenes footage of both of them choreographing the sex scene in question?
So she makes a career out of humiliating herself, joins up with a comedian who is known for humiliating himself and then decides she’s offended at being asked to humiliate herself. Have I got that right?
‘”So she makes a career out of humiliating herself, joins up with a comedian who is known for humiliating himself and then decides she’s offended at being asked to humiliate herself. Have I got that right?”’The real question is who fed into her paradigm shift. She didn’t always feel this way. Perhaps it happened as a result of her losing weight for her role in Senior Year?
Roughly accurate, yes.
You just missed the part where he is an awful person for asking her to stick a finger in his butt, years after she herself stuck a finger into another co-star’s butt without asking them or warning them or getting their consent first, which she then proceeded to repeatedly joke about…
It’s not hard to figure out. When you’re in on the joke it can be fun. It stops being fun when you feel like the joke is on you.
okay im gonna take a break now. see you later, bestie!
Basically. I see it like now that shes thin, she has standards she didnt have before.
Her whole career was based on “fat girl with accent fall down go boom ha ha.” She could have kept her dignity and been poor. Instead, she decided to shrug off any perceived indignity to become rich, which is fine. But now she’s whining? Like, lady, your defining role was a character named “Fat Amy.”
It’s almost like she was in on the joke. Are you people this fucking dumb?
“claims she’s maintained since at least 2014“This has a link to an article from last week that doesn’t say that.
It would have been more of a surprise to me if the big reveal in Rebel Wilson’s book had been that Sacha Baron Cohen was actually a really sweet guy who only had Wilson’s best interest at heart when making that movie I had never heard of until I started reading all about it on AVClub.
I think i watched like 10-15 minutes of it? It was a dumb action comedy, someone had the brilliant idea of “let’s do a ‘John Wick’ type action movie, but make it a dumb comedy with the guy from ‘Borat’ ”.
I can relate. I had a job where I had to wear a demeaning outfit intended to strip away all self-esteem and respect too. It was a McDonalds uniform.
I hope to God they didn’t ask you to stick your finger in any assholes.
Where do you think they get the special sauce for the big mac?
whaddaya think’s IN the BURGERS
“Sir, this is an Arbys. Please remove your finger. Now the other one.”
So that’s why you helped start United Artists.
Please – she’s been humiliating herself for gain for years. Guess the acting rolls have dried up.
This is my favorite kind of bullshit non-story. It’s got everything! A movie I haven’t seen, a book I’m never going to read, an actress I don’t give a shit about, an actor I stopped caring about after the first Borat movie, rich people bitching about other rich people for publicity, a formerly-great website using those rich people for clicks …
Exactly. The only thing missing here is an advertisement for an ‘online protection’ software, which is virus-like itself.And, oh, there it is…McAfee online protection.
NORDVPN
Fuck off, fat ass
Shut the fuck up, you fat old bitch
This is beginning to seem more like an ingenious way to drum up interest in people going back to watch the Brothers Grimsby.This all seems well too choreographed at this point.
It’s a good thing nobody saw The Brothers Grimsby.
Yeah, because we the audience simply had no idea beforehand that she was fat. Shh!