Why is Rebel Wilson's new book censored in the UK?

Rebel Wilson has spent the last few months on a publicity tour for her new book: Rebel Rising. Much of that publicity has been dominated by one particular section of the memoir, in which the 44-year-old star recounts what she claims was "the worst experience of my professional life".

Those blockbuster claims, though, are absent from the British edition of Rebel Rising. Anybody who buys a copy of the autobiography from a UK bookseller will be greeted by more than a page of tell-tale black censorship bars.

So what's going on here, and why is it only the UK and a few other territories that have been affected by this need for censorship?

Which parts of Rebel Wilson's book are censored in the UK?

The section in question of Rebel Rising relates to claims Wilson made about her on-set experience with Sacha Baron Cohen while filming the 2016 movie The Brothers Grimsby — released simply as Grimsby in the UK.

Wilson made numerous allegations against Sacha Baron Cohen, including claiming that he pressured her to go beyond her boundaries around on-screen nudity. She stated that he encouraged her to perform a scene containing a sexual act she wasn't expecting.

Cohen denied Wilson's claims, telling Yahoo UK: "While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage, and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of The Brothers Grimsby."

The segment of the book featuring these claims has been heavily edited in the UK, with around a page of material redacted, alongside an explanatory note saying it "can't be printed here due to peculiarities of the law in England and Wales".

The redactions in Australia and New Zealand are even more pronounced, with the entire chapter — entitled 'Sacha Baron Cohen and Other A*****es' — printed as black lines.

Cohen's team responded to the redactions with a statement earlier this week, saying: “Harper Collins did not fact check this chapter in the book prior to publication and took the sensible but terribly belated step of deleting Rebel Wilson’s defamatory claims once presented with evidence that they were false.

"Printing falsehoods is against the law in the UK and Australia; this is not a ‘peculiarity’ as Ms Wilson said, but a legal principle that has existed for many hundreds of years. This is a clear victory for Sacha Baron Cohen and confirms what we said from the beginning – that this is demonstrably false, in a shameful and failed effort to sell books.”

Why isn't Rebel Wilson's book censored in the USA?

Laws around defamation are vastly different in countries around the world. Britain and Australia have some of the strictest libel laws in the world, so it's common for tell-all memoirs to be heavily tweaked on this side of the Atlantic.

In the United States, however, free speech is heavily protected under the constitution, which makes it much harder to successfully win a libel case. This makes it less legally risky to publish potentially disparaging material.

Rebel Rising was published in its complete and unredacted form in the USA earlier this month.

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