Rebel Wilson and film producer Amanda Ghost’s feud escalates amidst tumultuous legal battles and new leaked audio.
A leaked recording obtained by The Hollywood Reporter has revealed Rebel Wilson’s PR team scheming to take down film producer Amanda Ghost.
Wilson and Ghost first crossed paths for production of Wilson’s directorial debut The Deb. Filming began in 2023, a year after the stage show premiered at ATYP to rave reviews.
A musical about a young girl dreaming of attending her small country town’s debutante ball felt the perfect choice for Wilson’s first foray into directing, and though seemed simple enough to translate the already popular material to the screen, a litany of production issues were about to unfold.
Ghost was on board to produce the film, alongside Vince Holden and Gregor Cameron. The trio would later be accused of inappropriate behaviour by Wilson.
In an Instagram post from July 2024, Wilson tries to explain why The Deb was not premiering at Toronto International Film Festival – because Ghost, Cameron and Holden had blocked its release.
She explained, “why are they stopping it from premiering at Toronto? Well, this dates back to October of last year, where I discovered bad behaviour by these business partners… inappropriate behaviour toward the lead actress of the film; embezzling funds from the film’s budget, which we really needed because we’re a small movie.”
The film ultimately played at TIFF’s closing night, but the accusations remained.
Within two days, the producers had launched legal proceedings, suing Wilson for defamation.
They denied the claims, stating “RW’s allegations are false, defamatory, and disappointing.”
Producers additionally claimed Wilson would desert production, sometimes for weeks at time, and accused the star of interfering with production.
Wilson then countersued and played her trump card; she accused Ghost of sexually harassing Charlotte MacInnes, star of The Deb.
MacInnies would go on to deny the assault in court, emphatically stating “these statements are completely false and absurd.”
The recent leaked audio reveals the lengths Wilson has gone to keep the rumour alive. In a meeting between digital fixer Jed Wallace, entertainment publicist Melissa Nathan, and her then-lawyer Bryan Freedman, ways to ruin Ghost’s career are discussed:
“Here’s the deal with Rebel … we need to create a path where we expose Amanda Ghost as the new Heidi Fleiss,” Wallace states, making reference to Heidi Fleiss, a prolific madame of Hollywood in the 90’s.
“We can’t just do, like, oh, she’s a bitch, she sucks. It’s, like, it’s got to be really, really heavy and connected to something that heavy.”
The brief is clear; no longer can Ghost be accused of poor behaviour, but a full-blown smear campaign suggesting her involvement with a sprawling network of Hollywood abusers, providing sex workers to co-producer and business partner Len Blavatnik.
The Agency Group, the PR team behind the campaign, were also behind Justin Baldoni’s smear campaign against Blake Lively, which brought the company’s tactics to light.
Most notably, the use of anonymous websites to spread false claims and assassinate the accused’s character.
The leaked audio comes from a zoom meeting which vice president Katie Case was not able to attend and therefore listen to later.
Instructions are passed on for her to review a document, detailing their plans for Ghosts’s smear website.
Though Rebel Wilson has denied requesting or creating the sites, her production company Camp Sugar is listed as an author of that same document.
A lawyer for Ghost said they “had long suspected that she not only contributed to the malicious sites but that she was the driving force behind them.
The website has since been deleted. It was once titled Amanda Ghost is a Destroyer of Worlds and labels Ghost the “Indian Ghislaine Maxwell.”
As legal battles intensified between the two, court documents allege that as well as commissioning the sites, Wilson was disappointed by their lack of exposure.
Texting her PR team, she says “I am obviously very upset by this … you were supposed to get the negative information out about Ghost and have failed to do that.”
The Deb is set to be released this April, but its 3 years of legal disputes and counter-claims will inevitably cloud what was otherwise a wholesome musical written and created by young women.
