Los Angeles, April 28 (IANS) Actress and comedian Rebel Wilson is standing her ground. The actress stuck to her assertion that she is a “champion of women” amid an explosive legal war with the star and producer of ‘The Deb’, which marks her directorial debut.

The lead actress Charlotte MacInnes is suing Wilson for defamation in Australia, and the ‘Pitch Perfect’ star gave evidence for the first time as part of a nine-day trial, reports ‘Deadline’.

Charlotte MacInnes alleges that Wilson damaged her reputation by claiming that she was a victim of “inappropriate behaviour” by ‘The Deb’ producer Amanda Ghost, and then colluded with Ghost to cover up what took place.

As per ‘Deadline’, Rebel maintained that Charlotte complained to her about Ghost’s conduct. The actress was softly spoken under cross-examination by Sue Chrysanthou, Charlotte’s barrister, during the hearing on Tuesday. Chrysanthou accused Rebel of bullying Charlotte and Ghost, and The Deb‘s writer, Hannah Reilly, despite claiming in her affidavit to be a “champion of women”.

She said, “That’s absolute nonsense. If you look over my 25-year career, you can see many evidence of me supporting women”.

Rebel also denied being involved in the creation of websites targeting Ghost with smears, which included calling the producer the “Indian Ghislaine Maxwell”.

Lawyers for MacInnes have accused Rebel of hiring Melissa Nathan, the American publicist of The Agency Group (TAG), to launch the websites. Charlotte’s case includes messages that originally emerged in the It Ends with Us dispute between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, in which PR executive Nathan tells former colleague Katie Case that “Rebel wants” a “really harsh” website about “Amanda”.

Rebel has consistently denied this, telling a U.S. court last year that she “unequivocally” played no role in “conceiving, planning, registering, directing, creating, writing, or posting the content of the websites”.

–IANS

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