Rebel Wilson allegedly sought to smear producer as ‘the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell’

The star of Rebel Wilson’s unreleased film The Deb has accused the Australian actor-turned-director of enlisting an American publicist to launch a smear campaign against one of the film’s producers in a defamation claim lodged in the Federal Court.

Documents in a case filed by actor Charlotte MacInnes allege Wilson requested in August last year that American publicist Melissa Nathan of The Agency Group publish websites that called producer Amanda Ghost “the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell” who had “turned full pimp” after failing in music, and was “procuring young women for the pleasure of the extremely wealthy”.

The documents include a text exchange between Nathan and Katie Case from the same company that said Wilson wanted a site that could refer to “Russian oglivarchs [sic] and making her a madam basically lol”.

Case allegedly replied: “Oh my god lol ok this one will be fun”.

There has been more than a year of bitter recriminations between Wilson, who directed The Deb; MacInnes, who played a city schoolgirl who goes to a country deb ball in the film; Ghost, who produced it with Gregor Cameron; and executive producer Vince Holden.

The film’s release has been stalled since its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.

In August, MacInnes issued Wilson with a concerns notice alleging a series of Instagram posts damaged her reputation.

She has now filed a defamation claim seeking damages, compensation for breach of confidence, costs, and a restraining order that would stop Wilson republishing similar claims.

Her claim alleges that in Wilson’s posts “MacInnes has been seriously injured in her reputation personally and professionally, and in her career, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial distress, embarrassment and hurt”.

The posts also suggested MacInnes was also a “sellout” for falsely denying being a victim of sexual harassment in exchange for another role and a record deal.

Another claim in the case is that Wilson told Ghost “she wanted to fire MacInnes from the film because she believed [the young actor] was sharing confidential information about the film with Hannah Reilly, the writer of the script for the film with whom Wilson was in dispute over the credit for the script”, and because MacInnes had made a false accusation against Ghost.

Approached for comment on the smear campaign allegation, Wilson told this masthead she had nothing to do with the creation or publishing of any websites.

“In fact my legal team was instrumental in getting these sites taken down by providing the other side with a way of doing this - claiming unauthorised use of a photograph of ME,” she said.

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