‘Pitch Perfect’ Star Rebel Wilson Wins Defamation Suit, Thanks Fans For Support Against ‘Bullies’

Her career suffered due to reports she had lied about her age in the tabloids, but now, actress Rebel Wilson has been vindicated after a jury sided with her and ruled against a media company she was suing for defamation.

According to The Guardian, Wilson, 37, has won her defamation suit against Bauer Media, which publishes both Woman’s Day and Australia Women’s Weekly. In 2015, a series of articles were published by the magazines which accused Wilson of lying about her name, her age and her childhood.

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Following the ruling, Wilson took to social media to thank everyone who supported her along the way, sharing a photo of herself smiling and pumping a fist in the air in victory.

During the trial proceedings, reporter Caroline Overington, who wrote articles about the controversy, took the stand to say that she had introduced herself to Wilson ahead of an interview they had scheduled in 2014, where she asked her to confirm her age was 29 and that her real name was Rebel. She said the actress had said “yes,” and then launched into a story about how her mother had given her that name. Overington claimed that she later found that Wilson was several years older and was given the birth name of Melanie, and wrote another article about her to set the record straight.

However, the six-person jury, after two days of deliberation, decided in favor of Wilson, with damages expected to be awarded later on.

After the ruling, Wilson admitted it wasn’t about damages for her, it was about clearing her name and hopefully being able to rebuild her career, which she had claimed suffered as a result of the reports.

“The reason I’m here is not for damages, it’s to clear my name. And the fact the jury has done that unanimously and answered every single of the 40 questions in my favor I think proves what I’ve been saying all along,” she said. “I was hoping the jury would do the right thing and send a message to these tabloids and they’ve done that, so for me, it’s over in my mind.”

Also saying that she felt like she’d stood up to “Bullies” who had damaged her career, Wilson said she felt the only way to fight back was to take them to court.

“Unfortunately, this was the only way that I could stand up to this huge media organization was by taking them to court publicly,” she said. “I’m a person that’s really confident in my own skin and really felt like it was the right thing to do, to take this company on and prove how disgusting and disgraceful their checkbook journalism is.”

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During the trial, Wilson said she’d had to “beg” to be let back into Hollywood to impress producers after the articles were published, but that she’d had no luck. She claimed she’d been dropped from the role of Jack Black’s panda love interest in “Kung Fu Panda 3” after the articles, being told by the head of DreamWorks that she was “too divisive” for a family movie. She also claimed she was fired from the movie “Trolls” as well and had not been offered any other movie roles since the articles were published.

“You’re not popular for long in Hollywood, you have a few years until you go out of fashion,” she said. “They took those two years away from me doing what I love, which is entertaining people and making people laugh.”