Rebel Wilson has broken her silence on a newspaper's attempt to 'out' her relationship with her girlfriend.
The Senior Year star, 42, confirmed her relationship with Ramona Agruma on Instagram on Thursday, 9 June, writing: "I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince… but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess."
Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald published a column on Saturday revealing they had given the actor and comedian 'two days' to make a comment on her relationship before they reported on it.
In the article, which has now been removed, journalist Andrew Hornery complained about being 'gazumped' by Wilson's announcement.
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The column received criticism online, suggesting it had forced Wilson to come out publicly. Now, the Pitch Perfect actor has spoken out after she was asked about column on Twitter.
Journalist Kate Doak called out the newspaper and wrote: “So apparently it wasn’t @RebelWilson’s choice to come out… The @smh/@theage have admitted to giving her a heads up 2 days in advance that they were going to ‘out’ her.”
Wilson replied: "Thanks for your comments, it was a very hard situation but trying to handle it with grace".
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Bevan Shields, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, responded to the backlash with a statement, which reads in part: “The article has promoted some public attention and I’ve been reading this feedback closely. In the interests of transparency I wanted to offer The Herald’s view on this issue.
“Our weekly Private Sydney celebrity column last week asked Wilson if she wished to comment about her new partner. We would have asked the same questions had Wilson’s new partner been a man.”
“To say that The Herald ‘outed’ Wilson is wrong. Like other mastheads do every day, we simply asked questions and as standard practice included a deadline for a response.
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“I had made no decision about whether or what to publish, and The Herald‘s decision about what to do would have been informed by any response Wilson supplied.
“Wilson made the decision to publicly disclose her new partner – who had been a feature of her social media accounts for months.”
Andrew Hornery, the journalist who wrote the initial column, also released a response which has replaced the original article on the Syndey Morning Herald’s website.
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He wrote: “I have learnt some new and difficult lessons from this and want to be upfront with you about the things I got wrong.”
Admitting that the paper ‘mishandled steps’ in their approach, he added: “I genuinely regret that Rebel has found this hard. That was never my intention. But I see she has handled it all with extraordinary grace. As a gay man I’m well aware of how deeply discrimination hurts. The last thing I would ever want to do is inflict that pain on someone else.”
Gregory Robinson