Rebel Wilson shows that being outed in 2022 is still ‘very hard’

When a writer for an Australian newspaper initially justified his decision to force Rebel Wilson to publicly reveal last week that she was in a same-sex relationship, he wrote that “outing” a celebrity should be “a redundant concept in 2022.”

“Love is love, right?” wrote Andrew Hornery, the author of the Private Sydney society column for the Sydney Morning Herald.

By Monday, however, Hornery and his publication were apologizing to the Australian actor and publicly acknowledging that outing anyone, including a celebrity, is still considered a cruel and potentially harmful act — even in a time when same-sex marriage is legal in the United States and Australia, and a small but growing number of stars have come out as gay.

Hornery wrote in a new column: “As a gay man I’m well aware of how deeply discrimination hurts. The last thing I would ever want to do is inflict that pain on someone else.”

Hornery offered his apology two days after he explained, with far less contrition, how he had given Wilson two days to comment on a story in which he would reveal that she was in a same-sex relationship with designer Ramon Agruma. Among other things, Hornery complained that Wilson had spoiled his attempts to be the first one to reveal that she was in a relationship with a woman. Hornery’s column immediately sparked outrage from other journalists and people in the LGBTQ community.

“Still reeling from the fact that a publication gave someone a deadline to out them in 2022,” Megha Mohan from the BBC tweeted. “Maybe I’m incredibly naïve but this is what I imagined 90s gutter press was like and most journalists had huge standards change since then.”

Added Australian journalist Kate Doak:

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. What’s worse, openly gay men at the Sydney Morning Herald were involved in this. ????????‍♀️ https://t.co/Zl80zg01SW

— Kate Doak (@katedoak) June 11, 2022

In a prelude leading up to the outing, Wilson on Friday wrote that she was in a relationship with Agruma. “I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince … but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess,” the Australian actor captioned a photo with Agruma.

Wilson was immediately flooded with more than 1.7 million likes and positive comments from fans and friends offering their support. “Adore you both so much!” one person wrote.

Over the next two days, Wilson acknowledged that the decision to go public with her relationship with Agruma wasn’t entirely her own, that it was prompted by Hornery’s plans to publish his column.

“It was a very hard situation but trying to handle it with grace,” Wilson tweeted Sunday.

When Hornery originally offered his take on Wilson’s post, he suggested that she wanted to ruin his scoop.

“Big mistake,” Hornery wrote. “Wilson opted to gazump the story.” He also criticized her for sharing her news on the same platform she had “previously used to brag about her handsome ex-boyfriend, wealthy American beer baron Jacob Busch.”

Hornery mostly downplayed concerns about outing a celebrity, although he acknowledged it could still be a sensitive matter to do so in 2022. He wrote, “As Rebel Wilson knows, we do not live in a perfect world.” He also insisted that he exercised an “abundance of caution and respect” by giving Wilson’s people a chance to comment.

The Herald’s editor, Bevan Shields, initially came to Hornery’s defense on Sunday, writing in a column that the newspaper was following standard practice.

“We would have asked the same questions had Wilson’s new partner been a man,” Shields wrote. “To say that the Herald ‘outed’ Wilson is wrong.

“Wilson made the decision to publicly disclose her new partner, who had been a feature of her social media accounts for months,” Shields said.

By Monday, both Hornery and the paper had changed their tunes. Shields tweeted:

The Herald made mistakes over Rebel Wilson, and will learn from them. Saturday’s piece has been retracted and Andrew Hornery goes into detail here about what we didn’t get right https://t.co/jrnBpbJ4ne

— Bevan Shields (@BevanShields) June 13, 2022

As Shields said, the paper replaced Hornery’s original column with a new one, headlined: “I made mistakes over Rebel Wilson, and will learn from them.” The writer apologized for the insensitive tone of his original column and wrote that he had learned “some new and difficult lessons” and that he and his editors “mishandled steps in our approach.”

Hornery also said that his email to Wilson’s publicists was not intended as a threat and that the paper does not want to “‘out’ people.” He acknowledged that his note might have come off threatening, adding that “the framing of it was a mistake.”