Rebel Wilson breaks silence after being forced to redact memoir in Australia: ‘Not happy’

Rebel Wilson has spoken out for the first time after being pulled away from motherhood duties to fight a legal book battle.

Rebel Wilson has finally addressed the controversy surrounding the move to have parts of her controversial new memoir redacted in Australia.

Australian readers have been left unable to read an entire chapter where Wilson detailed her account of working with Sacha Baron Cohen.

Rebel Wilson made an appearance on Tuesday night's episode of The Project. Picture from 10.

Despite already being published in the US, Australian and New Zealand versions of the book were held from shelves due to a legal battle that’s now been resolved, forcing Wilson to edit the book in the process.

HarperCollins Australia confirmed that “for legal reasons we have redacted one chapter in the Australian/New Zealand edition and included an explanatory note accordingly”.

Now, during an appearance on The Project, which airs tonight at 6.30pm on Channel 10 and 10 Play, Wilson has addressed the shock move.

“If anything it’s watered down a bit,” she explained in a clip shared exclusively with news.com.au, implying she’d left even more detail out. “Yeah, I mean so obviously behind the scenes that was something I was not happy about. I mean Australia is my home country, if anything I want my full story told and I will say … the book is not about that guy. I know there’s been a lot of media about it [Baron Cohen],” she told Sarah Harris. “But it’s not about that guy and it’s just my full life story.”

Wilson added that she was still grateful the memoir was released in any form because she didn’t want to spend months in court fighting to get it released while juggling being a new mum.

In November 2022, Wilson, and her fiancée Ramona Agruma, welcomed a baby girl named Royce.

The Aussie version of Wilson’s book is the most redacted version. Picture: ITV

“So, at least it’s come out now. Being a new mum I didn’t want to have some lengthy legal battle for it to come out.”

The chapter, titled “Sacha Baron Cohen and Other A**holes”, has been printed entirely as blacked out lines in Australia and New Zealand.

This means the Australian edition of Rebel Rising is officially the most redacted version of the book in the world. Differences in defamation law around the world have determined how much of the chapter can be included.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the book, Wilson alleges that she was once invited to a drug-fuelled orgy by a member of the British royal family.

The Aussie actress claims the incident happened in 2014 at a US tech billionaire’s home, reported the UK’s Telegraph.

“I got thrown a last-minute invite to a tech billionaire’s party – the guy who invited me … had said to my male friend, ‘We need more girls’,” Wilson claimed, without identifying the royal in question.

Originally published as Rebel Wilson breaks silence after being forced to redact memoir in Australia: ‘Not happy’