Rebel Wilson is being sued for defamation by three producers of her upcoming directorial debut “The Deb,” according to legal documents. Executive producer Vince Holden and producers Amanda Ghost and Gregor Cameron filed the suit after Wilson posted an Instagram video Wednesday claiming they embezzled funds and were sabotaging the film.
“Why are they stopping it from premiering at Toronto?” Wilson said in the Wednesday video. “Well, this dates back to October of last year, where I discovered bad behavior by these business partners. And let me just, you know, I just tell it how it is, so I’m just going to tell you who they are. They are so-called ‘producers’ of the film — I use that phrase very lightly. Their names are Amanda Ghost, and Gregory Cameron, and an executive producer who works with them called Vince Holden. So these are the people involved.”
She continued, “And so I said — reported, I guess you would say — their bad behavior when I found out not minor things, big things — you know, inappropriate behavior towards the lead actress of the film, embezzling funds from the film’s budget — which we really needed because we’re a small movie, you know? So kind of really important things.”
The post’s origin came from her thoughts that the named producers were stopping “The Deb” from having a closing night slot at the Toronto International Film Festival. There are also claims that the trio embezzled 900,000 Australian dollars.
Watch Wilson’s full Instagram video below:
The crux of the defamation lawsuit centers on Wilson having an unprofessional attitude and issuing threats of “exposing” financiers to her following. She also wanted a cowriting credit and rights to the film’s original music. She ended up getting an “additional writing by” credit with original screenwriter Hannah Riley earning the writing credit — much to Wilson’s reported dissatisfaction.
“Rebel is a bully who will disregard the interests of others to promote her own,” the producers’ lawyer said in the filing.
The lawyer continued, “Plaintiffs continuously attempted to resolve the disputes in good faith, but Rebel had other ideas. Even though the plan was always to show the film at TIFF, Rebel attempted to force the issue and bully them into capitulating to her other unreasonable demands by leveraging her popularity on social media to spread these malicious and baseless lies.”
“I made this great movie “The Deb,” Wilson said in her video. “And then now, you know, almost at the finish line. They’re saying, you know, it can’t come out. They might not release it, they might bury it. … Yeah, so that’s my dilemma. If the movie doesn’t play at Toronto, it’s because of these absolute f–kwits.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.