Australian actor Rebel Wilson announced her relationship with fashion designer Ramona Agruma in an Instagram post on June 9. Soon after the news, The Sydney Morning Herald revealed in an op-ed piece that it was planning to announce the actor’s new romance in the newspaper. In a statement by the newspaper on Saturday, it said that it gave Rebel a two-day deadline to comment on her current relationship, which she had not yet discussed publicly. In another piece on Sunday, the publication clarified, “To say that the Herald ‘outed’ Wilson is wrong.”
In her Instagram post, the Cats actress had announced that she was dating Ramona. She noted alongside a photo of the two, “I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince… but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess #loveislove.”
Soon after, in The Sydney Morning Herald, journalist Andrew Hornery said the newspaper gave Rebel two days to comment on the story before printing it, writing that she ‘opted to gazump the story, posting about her new Disney Princess’.
Soon after the news broke, social media users started criticising the publication for attempting to out Rebel.
Journalist Kate Doak tweeted, “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.”
Rebel responded to the tweet to say that the past few days had been challenging. “Thanks for your comments, it was a very hard situation but trying to handle it with grace,” she wrote.
As reported by The Hindustan Times, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Editor Bevan Shields issued a statement on the matter on Sunday, He said, “Our weekly Private Sydney celebrity column 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.”
“Like other mastheads do every day, we simply asked the questions and as standard practice included a deadline for a response,” he added.
