During Pride Month, on June 10th, Rebel Wilson took to Instagram to announce her relationship with fashion and jewelry designer Ramona Agruma. But all was not what it seemed: while the couple were all smiles, Wilson was essentially forced to reveal the same-sex relationship–before some family members knew about it–after a journalist who works at the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper pressured her to do so. Only recently, Wilson officially broke her silence in an interview with one of SMH’s rival newspapers: The Australian.
“I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince,” Wilson 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. Gay journalist Andrew Hornery confirmed that he sent an email that pressured Wilson to come out, “giving her” two days to comment on the relationship before the paper published a “single word.”
His excuse was, essentially, that the world is imperfect and a story is a story; he needs to get one no matter the tactic or cost. “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 backpedalled and apologized. But even Whoopi Goldberg called bullshit on it.
Since the fiasco, Wilson has kept fairly quiet about her opinion on the matter. We know she found it to be a “very hard situation,” that she tried “to handle with grace,” because of a tweet responding to criticism of the Sydney Morning Herald and Hornery’s actions. But she has not publicly gone into detail about being outed… until now.
The actress has officially broken her silence. Giving the story to one of Sydney Morning Herald’s main competitors, The Australian, Rebel revealed how she was “threatened” to make her relationship public without her consent… and before she had shared the news with family and friends.
“Obviously, my relationship with Ramona is something that I wasn’t hiding in any way – it wasn’t a secret,” she told The Australian.
As Hornery should know, a same-sex relationship being exposed is completely different to a heterosexual one – especially if this is the first time you’ve been in one. “Coming out in a same-sex relationship, there are levels to telling people,” Wilson said.
“You tell your close family and your friends and not everybody. Across our two families not everybody is as accepting as what you’d hoped for, and we were trying to be respectful to those people and tell them in our own way. Basically, with the situation where a journalist is threatening to out you, you’ve got to hurry and some people we didn’t get a chance to tell before it came out publicly. And that’s not ideal.
“It was just a hard few days, especially for my partner who’s not used to being in the public eye and not used to having to deal with stuff like that. It was probably more harmful for her in many respects. But to me, in 2022, love is love. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal and that we should kind of be forced to make an announcement about it. But that happened.”
During the interview, Wilson spoke about starring in a British independent–and sapphic!–film, The Almond and the Seahorse. The story is about two women whose partners have traumatic brain injuries. The pair end up sharing an emotional, sexual relationship.
It was the first time Wilson shared a kiss with a woman on screen. “Oh, yeah, well, no pressure!” she said. “I was very nervous that day. Oh God, the first woman I’m going to kiss is the iconic Charlotte Gainsbourg. She’s obviously done much racier (roles), so I didn’t know how it was going to go.
“But Charlotte is so professional and great to work with and it was good. Obviously, it’s never very romantic kissing anybody on set, but it was definitely a cool experience. I kind of wish it went further in the film, but it’s more about their emotional connection, because those two characters are both going through similar things with their partners and needing an escape from that.”
