On June 10, Rebel Wilson took to Instagram to announce her relationship with entrepreneur Ramona Agruma. “I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince,” she captioned a picture of the pair. “But maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess. #LoveIsLove.” The announcement wasn’t under fairytale circumstances, however, and Whoopi Goldberg isn’t okay with what happened behind the scenes.
While the love birds were all smiles, Wilson was forced to come out by the Sydney Morning Herald. Wilson responded to a tweet about the matter on June 11, saying “Thanks for your comments, it was a very hard situation but trying to handle it with grace.”
SMH’s role in outing Wilson was made public when the paper’s journalist, Andrew Hornery, who is gay, confirmed that he sent the email that pressured Wilson to come out. He did so by “giving her” two days to comment on the sapphic relationship before the paper published a “single word.”
“In a perfect world, ‘outing’ same-sex celebrity relationships should be a redundant concept in 2022. Love is love, right?”, he wrote in his Saturday column. “As Rebel Wilson knows, we do not live in a perfect world.
“So, it was with an abundance of caution and respect that this media outlet emailed Rebel Wilson’s representatives on Thursday morning, giving her two days to comment on her new relationship with LA leisure wear designer Ramona Agruma, before publishing a single word.”
Hornery then attacked Wilson, arguing it was her who “opted to gazump the story,” as it was her “choice to ignore our discreet, genuine and honest queries,” which, in the paper’s view, was “underwhelming.”
So the paper was “respecting” Rebel Wilson and her relationship by “giving” her two days to give them the exclusive scoop or they’ll publish about it anyway?
This is all Rebel’s wrong-doing, for choosing to come out on her social media rather than surrendering the juicy story to the Sydney Morning Herald?
It’s not a “perfect world” so all is fair in love and media wars?
Hornery has since back-pedalled on the tantrum and apologized: “My email was never intended to be a threat but to make it clear I was sufficiently confident with my information and to open a conversation.
“It is not the Herald’s business to ‘out’ people,” he continued. “That is not what we set out to do. But I understand why my email has been seen as a threat. The framing of it was a mistake.”
That’s when Whoopi Goldberg called bullshit.
“There’s a lot of speculation that Rebel came out to get ahead of a tabloid story in the Sydney Morning Herald about her relationship,” Goldberg said on The View.
“Now, the man who wrote it even apologized, saying it was ‘never his intention to out her’… Well, you know that’s not true,” she added.
“If it wasn’t your intention, you wouldn’t have done it. If you didn’t want to do it, you shouldn’t have done it. You knew exactly what you were doing.”
The View co-host Sara Haines agreed.
“I would not give a quote or talk to a place that’s forcing me to tell a story that I’m not ready to tell,” she said.
