Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Rebel Wilson has been called “f**king nuts” in text messages from a crisis PR firm she is accused of ordering to create a “take down website” about the producer of her directorial debut, a court has been told.
Australian actor Charlotte MacInnes, the lead actor in Ms Wilson’s directorial debut The Deb, is suing Ms Wilson over a series of social media posts allegedly made by the Aussie star.
The case hinges on allegations by Ms Wilson that the younger actor claimed she felt uncomfortable after a sunset swim at Bondi Beach with one of the film’s producers Amanda Ghost, and a subsequent bath they took at the producer’s penthouse apartment in September 2023.
Ms MacInnes has denied making such a complaint, with Ms Wilson alleging the younger actor lied by doing so to get a record deal and a role in another of Ms Ghost’s productions.
The Bridesmaids star was described as “f**king nuts” in text messages read out during the second day of Ms Wilson’s nine day defamation trial in the Federal Court in Sydney on Tuesday.
The text was between employees from the public relations firm The Agency Group (TAG), which Ms Wilson allegedly hired in July 2024.
Ms Wilson is accused of ordering the firm to create an attack website against Ms Ghost, with the site amandaghostsucks.com posting allegations that the producer was a sex trafficker, according to court documents.
Melissa Nathan of TAG told another employee, Katie Case, that the sites “can be really really harsh” according to text messages tendered in court documents.
A voicemail from a social media contractor who worked for TAG, Jed Wallace, was played to the court appearing to plan out the need to “create a path where we expose Amanda Ghost”.
“We can’t just do ‘she’s a b***h she sucks’ it’s like gotta be really really heavy and connected to something that heavy,” Mr Wallace said in the voicemail.
Ms Case dialled into the court from New York via an audiovisual link on Tuesday where she described it as a “whistleblower” website, with the court told she had texted a friend calling it a “take down website” and saying “lol I helped write it”.
She agreed with Justice Elizabeth Raper that there was no actual whistleblower, the site was just created to appear that way.
Ms Case said she was tasked with editing a draft copy of what would be published on the website she had received to be “punchy” and to “incorporate language from Jed’s voice note” into it before sending it back to Ms Nathan.
While she was not aware of who wrote the draft at the time, she later discovered it was authored by Ms Wilson’s production company Camp Sugar.
She agreed with Ms Wilson’s lawyer Dauid Sibtain SC that someone else could have written the document and named the author as Camp Sugar.
Mr Sibtain on Monday claimed the “websites are a distraction”.
“The critical issue is that Ms MacInnes did in fact make a complaint to Ms Wilson. She did. And then realising, understanding that that would be fatal to her career if she maintained that complaint, she withdrew it … and she denied that she ever made it,” Mr Sibtain told the court on Monday.
The trial continues.
