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Rebel Wilson made history when she was awarded $4.5 million in a defamation suit against Bauer Media in June 2017. The publisher of Woman’s Day magazine appealed the sum it was ordered to pay the actress – and on Thursday, The Court of Appeal slashed this amount to just $600 000.
In what was Australia’s highest-ever defamation payout, the Pitch Perfect star has said it was never about the money. “The Court of Appeal in Australia will be handing down their decision in the morning re my defamation case against @bauermedia. As I’ve said before, I have already WON the case and this is UNCHALLENGED!” Wilson wrote on Twitter.
“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.”
Spectacularly, Wilson has originally offered to settle for $200 000 in damages after she says she was defamed in a series of articles published by Bauer Media which called into question her age and real name. Wilson says this cost her multiple film roles and thus salaries.
“I got to a really fantastic point … a group of women who I didn’t know, who had never met me, orchestrated this take-down and said everything about me in my life was fake,” Wilson said at the time. “It was so devastating to have that happen. I’m proud of myself, though, for standing up to them. This is a huge media organisation owned by German billionaires. That means they can afford to pay, by the way. And they intimidated me — they didn’t want me to sue them publicly. But I felt like it was the right thing to do,” she continued.
More to come.
