Rebel Wilson has been accused of using a crisis public relations team to plot a smear campaign against the producer of The Deb that included claims of sex trafficking.
According to an exposé by The Hollywood Reporter, new leaked audio reveals that Wilson’s PR team planned to smear Amanda Ghost, the movie's producer, by creating anonymous websites to host the startling accusation that she is a “madame” who finds young women for powerful men.
“We can’t just do, like, oh, she’s a bitch, she sucks,” digital fixer Jed Wallace said in the recording. “It’s, like, it’s got to be really, really heavy and connected to something that heavy.”
The alleged plan to smear Ghost online comes after Wilson accused the producers of her directorial debut The Deb of inappropriate behavior and embezzlement. The 2024 accusation was followed by a defamation lawsuit against Wilson by both the producers and the film’s star, Charlotte MacInnes, who accused Wilson of harassment, bullying, and making up lies about sexual assault on set.
In response, Wilson allegedly hired Wallace and entertainment publicist Melissa Nathan, both of whom were part of Justin Baldoni’s crisis PR team while he was entrenched in a scandal with Blake Lively surrounding the film It Ends With Us. Nathan’s PR shop, The Agency Group, has also worked with Drake and Johnny Depp, according to THR.
In the recording obtained by THR, the digital fixer tells Nathan to accuse Ghost of procuring sex workers for billionaire Len Blavatnik, owner of Ghost’s production company AI Film.
“So basically what we need to do is, we need to create a path where we expose Amanda Ghost,” Wallace said in the recording. “Amanda Ghost is like the new Heidi Fleiss. Like, she masquerades as — the reason why she sucks so bad at music is because she’s actually getting hookers for Blavatnik, right, and that’s what she does.” Ghost was formerly a music executive at Epic Records.
The website created by the team, which has since been deleted, was called "Amanda Ghost is a Destroyer of Worlds" and accused Ghost of being the “Indian Ghislaine Maxwell” who “turned full pimp, reinventing herself as a theatrical producer alongside her husband while really procuring young women for the pleasure of the extremely wealthy.”
Ghost's lawyer Camille Vasquez told THR, “Rebel Wilson has repeatedly denied any involvement in the creation of the smear websites — not just on television but in her sworn legal testimony. We, however, had long suspected that she not only contributed to the malicious sites but that she was the driving force behind them. The evidence we have submitted to the court in California supports that conclusion.”
