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- [00:01]
Ruby Jones
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. It's a case where the art has been overshadowed by the drama. The star of Australian film the deb, singer Charlotte McInnes is suing Australian actor and director Rebel Wilson for defamation. Over two weeks of hearings, the court was told about smear campaigns, hacked Snapchats, and the central claim that Rebel Wilson lied about her star. Actress Rebel is accused of being a fantastical liar who orchestrated a complete revision of history. She maintains she's telling the truth and that she's a whistleblower who supports women. A judge is deciding on which version of events is true, with a decision expected any day today. Senior reporter at the Daily Telegraph, Nathaniel Cooper on the trial, the movie and the consequences for everyone involved. It's Thursday, may 14th.
- [01:09]
Interviewer
So, Nathaniel, this story begins with a film called the Deb, which I've heard is a musical comedy written and made here in Australia. So to begin with, can you just tell me a bit about the film and how it came about?
- [01:22]
Nathaniel Cooper
Well, interestingly for the Deb, it actually began as a stage production, the Australian Theatre for Young People. And I think its first production was in 2023, 2022, somewhere around there. It's written by an Australian writer, performer, comedian, glamazon Hannah Riley. She was coming to court every day and one of our favorite things was, what's Hannah going to wear today?
- [01:45]
Ruby Jones
I was inspired to write the Deb after an encounter that I had with a teenage debutante at Schoolies Week in a sort of semi rural surf town in northern New South Wales.
- [01:56]
Nathaniel Cooper
So she wrote this musical comedy called the Deb. It premiered in the Rebel Theater at the Australian Theatre for Young People. Rebel saw it and loved it and decided to turn it into a film.
- [02:08]
Ruby Jones
Don't have a debate and I need one if I want to go. I'll get you a date. Thick with masculinity, the unmistakable mask of Link's Africa.
- [02:20]
Nathaniel Cooper
And then in September 2023, they began formal pre production of the film. And that collided with so many matters that are before the courts at the moment.
- [02:30]
Interviewer
Okay, so what was the first sign then that there was some trouble on the production?
- [02:35]
Nathaniel Cooper
There were a couple of things happening at the same time in September 2023. One of them was a dispute between Hannah Riley and Rebel Wilson over the writing credits. Rebel wanted a writing credit for the film that went into arbitration with the Australian Writers Guild. There was also some Argy bargy over the budget with the film's producers. So there were some items that appeared in the budget that Rebel wasn't happy with. And then on the 5th of September, 2023, Amanda Ghost, one of the producers of the film, and Charlotte McInnes, who was playing the lead role of Maeve. Charlotte was staying with Amanda in a apartment in Bondi. And after some studio sessions that day, in the early evening, they went for a swim at Bondi. And Amanda suffers from a medical condition where she has a strong reaction to extreme temperatures. So extreme cold in this case, she got out of the water and had an anaphylactic reaction, as she describes it. So they went back to the apartment. They were in their swimwear. Charlotte helped Amanda into the shower while she ran a bath. Then, on Charlotte's telling of the story, she jumped in the bath because she was cold. Amanda couldn't warm up, so she jumped in the bath as well, still wearing their bathing suits. And that began a whole range of issues. The next day, Rebel says that Charlotte complained to her that she felt uncomfortable when she was asked to have a bath and a shower. Charlotte says that she never complained and she was never uncomfortable. And that's the genesis of the court case that just wrapped up on Friday here in Sydney. The rising Aussie star suing Hollywood celebrity Rebel Wilson for defamation has finally shared her side of the story in court. Charlotte MacInnis today grilled over.
- [04:22]
Interviewer
OK, and so tell me more then, about what Charlotte Mikinis is saying is defamatory. What's the case she's making?
- [04:30]
Nathaniel Cooper
So about 12 months after the film finished shooting, Rebel began putting posts on Instagram. There were a whole range of them, and they contain a number of what Charlotte's team says are defamatory imputations. Basically, their case is that she painted her out to be a liar who changed her story about the complaint in order to gain benefit for herself. And they also say that Rebels posts painted her as a woman for sale. She's been seriously affected by this, according to what she said in court and in her affidavit, she said that she's been unable to sleep, she's been unable to eat. She also hasn't had any acting work since these posts were made. The Great Gatsby premiered before Rebel made these posts, and she hasn't had any acting work since then. Rebel's team say that there's no way of knowing whether she would have got any acting work anyway. And she also did sign a recording deal prior to all this happening, and she's continued releasing singles.
- [05:26]
Interviewer
Okay, so across that two weeks of hearings, tell me a bit more about what's come out about interactions on the production.
- [05:33]
Nathaniel Cooper
So the first week of the trial was mainly Charlotte's witnesses, including Charlotte herself. And so we heard from Hannah Riley who spoke about the atmosphere on set, which didn't sound particularly good. Charlotte broke down in tears at least once to my memory, when she was talking about how difficult it was to be around Rebel. Suka San, through the barrister representing Charlotte, painted Rebel as a bully who paints herself as a champion of women. But instead she has bullied and harassed Charlotte McInnes. She said that she's bullied and harassed Amanda Ghost, the producer at the centre of the bath incident and that she's bullied and harassed Hannah Riley. So Rebel in the first week was in court the first day of the hearing, but didn't come back into the court again until she had to give evidence.
- [06:21]
Court Reporter
The Hollywood A lister took to a stand just before 11 this morning in Sydney and has been grilled by Ms. McInnes lawyer Sue Chrysanthu SC Rebel Wilson is.
- [06:32]
Nathaniel Cooper
And then in the second week of the hearing when it was her chance to give evidence, she said that she's never bullied or harassed anyone. She said that she is a truth teller and she's known as a truth teller.
- [06:42]
Court Reporter
Sue Chrisanthu put it to Ms. Wilson that she mistreated a number of women involved in the deb, but Ms. Wilson replied, I don't believe I've ever mistreated a woman and there were no complaints ever raised against me on the deb or any time in my 25 year career.
- [07:00]
Nathaniel Cooper
And Rebel Wilson is saying that Charlotte did make the complaint, that she was doing what any person in her position would do when a young actress said she was made to feel uncomfortable by a senior person on the film, the producer, the creative producer, but also attached to the finance of the film. So Rebel said in court that this was a nightmare situation for her to be in to hear this complaint and then she had to do something about it. While Charlotte's team tried to paint her as a liar, particularly in the closing arguments on Friday last week, you know, Suka Santu did take the court through all the times that Rebel's evidence didn't necessarily match up, times she's contradicted herself or times she introduced new things that she'd never said before. Despite having put multiple posts on Instagram, despite being involved in multiple different cases around the world related to this film, there was new stuff introduced during her evidence that we'd never heard before.
- [07:57]
Ruby Jones
Coming up, the moment Nathaniel got a DM from Rebel Wilson's Instagram account. Nathaniel. This is just one of many lawsuits involving Rebel Wilson and the film. There's another one involving a website which made some pretty nasty claims about one of the producers, Amanda Ghost. So just how messy is this?
- [08:25]
Nathaniel Cooper
So there's four court cases related to this. There's the producers suing Rebel for defamation over the post. There's Amanda Ghost suing Rebel over the websites, Charlotte suing Rebel over the posts and the websites playing into aggravated damage. And then there's also a more corporate side breach of contract matter happening in the Supreme Court in Sydney in September. So one of the really interesting things that came out just before the trial began in the US case were these websites called amandagostsucks.com and amandaghost.com where the websites basically painted Amanda Ghost as the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell. They were really awful websites. But also within them was this remark about Charlotte, without naming her, that said that she had changed her story and been given a recording deal and a role in another musical called Gatsby that the producers lost $25 million on. So they were using that as hush money to keep her quiet. So that website, even though it doesn't explicitly name Charlotte, and it came about after the Instagram posts, that's actually formed part of this case. So in the U.S. trial, we found that Rebbl had, through her lawyer, engaged this crisis PR firm called the Agency Group, or TAG. And what is particularly interesting about this is it's the same group that have been accused of creating the smear websites about Blake Lively in the case she has bought against Justin Baldonian Wayfarer. So they pulled Katie Case, who was a publicist at tag, in to give a deposition, and through that, a document was shared with the court that contained the contents that eventually appeared on the Amanda Ghost website with the Indian Gleam. Maxwell claims the lawyers in that case looked at the metadata of that document, which was shared from the head of the Agency Group to Katie Case, and found that it was created by Camp Sugar, which is Rebel Wilson's company, and last authored by Camp Sugar. So that's been pulled into this case here in Australia as part of the claim for aggravated damages, that Rebel continued to make what Charlotte says are defamatory claims about her. And we saw in court they did a live example of going into the metadata of this document, and there it was foal to say Camp Sugar created it and it was authored by Camp Sugar.
- [10:52]
Ruby Jones
And so what did Rebel Wilson say
- [10:54]
Interviewer
when that was put to her?
- [10:55]
Nathaniel Cooper
Rebel said that she had nothing to do with the website. She's continued in, in her affidavits, both in Australia and in the US in an interview with 60 Minutes, to say that she knows nothing about these websites. Obviously, I had zero to do with the websites.
- [11:11]
Interviewer
I wouldn't. I don't even know how to create a website.
- [11:13]
Nathaniel Cooper
She wasn't involved in the creation of the website. She didn't write them. She wouldn't know how to make a website.
- [11:18]
Interviewer
Yeah, obviously it's categorically false to say that I had anything to do with
- [11:22]
Nathaniel Cooper
it, but Charlotte's position is that the metadata tells a completely different story.
- [11:28]
Ruby Jones
And when you wrote a story about that metadata, you actually got a DM from Rebel Wilson's Instagram account about it, is that right?
- [11:38]
Nathaniel Cooper
Yeah, it was actually when I wrote about the metadata on the websites, when that came up in the US courts, I wrote about it and then Rebel herself slid into my DMs, which was a wild moment at three o' clock in the morning. It was a really strange message. It was. It was written in the third person. So I don't know if Rebel sat there and typed it out herself or if someone else has access to her Instagram and wrote it on her behalf, but it was basically sharing her concerns about the story that I'd written about the deposition in the us so it was a very strange moment.
- [12:16]
Interviewer
And regardless of the outcome, something like this does seem damaging for everyone involved. I mean, there's a lot of things that have been made public. So what do you think the impact of something like this is for everyone who kind of ends up in court?
- [12:31]
Nathaniel Cooper
I think that nobody comes out of this looking particularly good. I think, you know, both sides have done a great job of painting each other as the villain in this story. I think, you know, if Charlotte wins, then it's going to be very hard for Rebel to continue her storytelling as being a truth teller and a champion of women. If Rebel wins, I think that that's going to have huge implications for Charlotte's career. She was talked about throughout the trial as being a troublemaker, and I think that kind of mud sticks. You know, it's also had this collateral damage on people. I think, you know, Hannah Riley, there were text messages about her in court that would have been really hard for her to read and hear people talking about her like that. Amanda Ghost has been at the center of this because of the bath incident, and people are going to have opinions about that. It's been a really, really messy trial with a lot of big characters in it, like, boy George's name has been used. Britney Spears, Charlotte's manager. Manager is the publicist for both of those people. So we've heard these big celebrity names come up in court, so it's been fascinating. There's been thousands of people watching the trial online. I think it's going to be really a really difficult thing for everyone to overcome and get past when the decision's made.
- [13:54]
Interviewer
And of course, in the middle of all of this, the film the Deb actually was released in Australia just a few weeks ago. So have you seen it?
- [14:03]
Nathaniel Cooper
I have and I loved it. I think it is magnificent. It. It could have sat there with Muriel's Wedding and Priscilla and those, you know, iconic Australian movies, but it didn't do well. It got great reviews. Its opening weekend, it made about $188,000, which is not a lot. It was in a lot of cinemas and didn't make a lot of money. The budget for it was $22 million. It's already finished in cinemas, so it's going to have to make its money back on streaming somehow. So whether, you know, the. The publicity around this movie has turned people off going and seeing it or whether people weren't interested in seeing in the first place, we'll never know. But it's a shame because it's a great movie. Hannah Riley's script is fantastic. The music's brilliant. Charlotte McInnes, like it should be her moment to be discovered as a star. She is so good in the film. So is Natalie Abbott, who stars opposite at her. It's a real shame that it hasn't flown like it should have.
- [15:04]
Interviewer
Well, Nathaniel, thank you so much for your time today.
- [15:06]
Nathaniel Cooper
Thanks for having me.
- [15:16]
Ruby Jones
Also in the news, the coalition has vowed to repeal Labor's proposed changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax if it wins power, setting up the next election as a fight over key tax reform measures from the budget. Opposition leader Angus Taylor says a future coalition government would reinstate more generous rules for property investors, as well as for Australians minimising their tax through trusts. Taylor says the coalition will only support a new $250 billion tax offset for workers and new funding for hospitals. And plans for a $1.5 billion Trump Tower on the Gold coast have collapsed less than three months after the development was first announced. The tower was promised to become Australia's tallest and best resort when it was unveiled on social media in February. But developer Altus Property Group says it walked away because the Trump brand had become toxic in Australia. The Trump Organisation, meanwhile, is claiming Altus failed to meet basic financial obligations under the proposed deal. Both sides say they still plan to pursue tower projects in Australia. However, Gold Coast Council says no formal development application had ever been submitted for the Trump Tower development. I'm Ruby Jones, this is 7:00am thanks for listening.