Rebel Wilson’s Controversial Directorial Debut Worse Than Its Legal Fiasco
TORONTO, Canada—Musicals are meant to make us forget real-life woes, right? Well, Rebel Wilson might be hoping so. The Pitch Perfect and Cats star brought her directorial debut The Deb–a lighthearted Australian musical in which she also stars–to the Toronto International Film Festival as the closing night film amid ongoing headline-grabbing drama.
This past summer, Wilson took to Instagram and accused two of the film’s producers of misconduct, embezzlement, and attempting to thwart the film’s festival premiere. Those producers denied Wilson’s claims and sued her for defamation. While The Deb doesn’t arrive with onscreen signs of behind-the-scenes turmoil, the original musical does land with a bit of an identity crisis.
The film takes its name for the tradition of teenage debutante balls, an event that its central outcast Taylah (newcomer Natalie Abbott) desperately awaits despite her lack of a date. A potential chaos agent arrives in the form of her cousin Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes), an influencer expelled for flashing her classmates as a form of protest against the school’s dress code. Maeve’s mother banishes her to Taylah’s drought-stricken town in the bush to suffer in the more conservative environment.