In a classic Friday afternoon news dump, Isla Fisher and Sacha Baron Cohen revealed they filed for divorce last year. They’ve been together since 2001, married since 2010, and have three children together.
Of course, given the timing of the announcement, my mind went right to Rebel Wilson, who alleges in her new memoir, Rebel Rising, that Cohen “sexually harassed” her on the set of The Brothers Grimsby, saying Cohen “gets off on making people feel uncomfortable” (well…yes, that’s been his schtick since Ali G day one). Cohen denies the allegation.
If you take one second to do the math, it DOESN’T line up, because Fisher and Cohen filed for divorce last year, and Rebel Wilson has only been promoting her book for the last month or so. But no one does math! Everyone will 100% jump from “didn’t Rebel Wilson say he’s a skeeve?” to “Isla dumped his ass” and associate the two things. Which sort of begs the question why they announced their divorce TODAY. They held onto it for a year, no one was checking for them as a couple, they couldn’t stay in stealth mode a little longer just to avoid bad optics?
Apparently not! Perhaps one of them is about to unveil a new relationship, so they had to go on the record about their split now. Or maybe they’ve ironed out all the details and just felt like now was the time to move on, for themselves and their family. There is probably a perfectly normal reason for the timing of the announcement, but it seems strange not to consider how it would look next to Wilson’s claims about Cohen. It certainly isn’t helping Cohen in the moment.
Interestingly, though Wilson’s book was released in America this week, it has been delayed in the UK and Australia, allegedly due to a legal threat from Cohen. Wilson’s publisher, HarperCollins, claims the delay is just to better line up the releases with the press tours, to capitalize on peak attention. Two things can be true, Sacha Baron Cohen threatened legal action, AND Wilson’s publisher wants to make sure they’re maximizing press bang for book buck. Still. Interesting!
