Summary: An appeals court ordered Rebel Wilson to return 80% of the judgment she had won in the defamation case against Bauer Media.
In 2016, Rebel Wilson won millions in a defamation case against a magazine publisher, but this week, a court ordered her to pay back the majority of her award.
An Australian jury ordered Bauer Media to give Wilson $3.5 million, one of the biggest defamation awards in the country’s history. The defendant paid the amount to the Pitch Perfect actress, but they filed an appeal. On Wednesday, the court lowered Wilson’s award by millions, according to the BBC.
The court reduced Wilson’s win to $454,000, and she was ordered to pay back the rest plus interest.
Wilson had sued Bauer after the media giant published a series of articles about how she had lied about her age and background to make it in Hollywood. Wilson said the publisher had ruined her reputation, but the appeals court said she had failed to adequately show that she had lost roles due to the stories.
Wilson said that she had sued not for money but out of principle, and on Twitter, she said that she had wanted to win as much money as possible to give to charity. Fox News stated it is unclear what charities she had given the award to.
“What happens tomorrow is to do with the losers @bauermedia quibbling about how much they now have to pay me. While this case was never about the money for me, I do hope to receive as much as possible to give away to charities and to support the Australian film industry,” Wilson stated.
In the appeal, Bauer had not argued against the jury’s finding that they had committed defamation, but they said that the reward amount was excessive.
In 2015, Women’s Day, the tabloid owned by Bauer, published a series of articles that exposed Wilson’s real age and questioned her background, including whether or not her name Rebel was fake.
At the time, Wilson was in her 30s but had been portraying herself as years younger. In court, she said that Women’s Day called her a liar when she had only not corrected reporters who were mistaken about her age. She defended other claims in the article, stating that the stories about her background that she had shared in the media were true.
“If I was guilty of something, I mean, I don’t really have any skeletons in my closet, which is why it’s quite hard for people to write bad stuff about me,” Wilson said on Australia’s Home Delivery in 2016. “You know, I don’t have a drug addiction or a secret child. But I think when I did go to America, I kind of just stopped saying my age.”
The defamation case had lasted for four weeks and was heard by a jury. Wilson has starred in the Pitch Perfect movies as well as Bridesmaids.
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