The release of actress Rebel Wilson’s memoir has been delayed in Australia and Britain.

Rebel Rising was published in the US on Tuesday, and was to be released in Australia on Wednesday and Britain on Thursday.

But that was delayed at the last minute, with the 44-year-old Australian star’s autobiography now reportedly due for British publication on April 25 – and no confirmed date yet for Australia.

Publisher HarperCollins said publication “in the UK and Australia has been moved to coincide with Rebel Wilson’s press tours”.

Her British promotional tour begins on April 24, while she is due in Australia for a similar tour from May 9.

The delay in both countries follows Wilson’s claims about actor Sacha Baron Cohen, and confirmation her book features a chapter about him.

Wilson starred opposite Baron Cohen in the 2016 comedy film Grimsby. She recently told Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper it was “the worst professional experience of my career” and she felt “disrespected on set”.

“It’s one thing for someone who is fat to exploit their size for comedy, but it’s another for somebody else to humiliate you,” she said.

Wilson said she felt costumes were chosen to “see all the cellulite on my thighs and a top to show the fattest part of my arm”, leaving her feeling “like I was something to be laughed at and degraded because of my size”.

She also said she felt her character was being “demeaned” after a stripper was hired to portray her running naked around a football pitch.

In Rebel Rising, Wilson wrote of being asked to do some things for Grimsby that were “derogatory to women or to my size”, and some scenes made her feel like she was “being humiliated” and “sexually harassed”.

She likened Baron Cohen to a “fourth-grade bully who teases the fat girl on the playground and tries to make her life a living hell”.

Wilson returned months later for the film’s reshoots.

“The fact that I then went back… I felt ashamed of myself. Why do I have such low self-worth?” she said.

She said she left feeling “shaken” and that “it took months to recover”.

Wilson said she did not say more at the time out of fear of being labelled a troublemaker. The Bridesmaids actress also reflected on how she has used her image to further her career and said making herself look “ugly” was a part of her plan.

“When I was younger I deliberately made myself less attractive,” Wilson said.

“I wanted to make something of myself, have a great career and make a lot of money.

“I knew I wouldn’t be taken seriously like a Cate Blanchett or Nicole Kidman, but I quickly realised that the bigger you were, the more audiences laughed.

“I’d have my gut hanging out and wear micro-shorts on stage, no make-up, stuff that horrified my mother.

“It was a really conscious decision to look ugly. It was part of my plan.”

Wilson told The New York Times that she expected Baron Cohen would deny her account.

“I knew he wasn’t going to take it, proverbially, lying down. This is not about cancelling someone. It’s part of my story, my memoir. And I’m allowed to write about what happened to me, and how that made me feel,” she said.

Last week, a spokesman for Baron Cohen told CNN that Wilson’s claims were “demonstrably false”.

While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage, and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of The Brothers Grimsby,” they said.

The memoir also discusses Wilson’s her first sexual encounters.

“I lost my virginity quite late in life, at 35,” she told US TV host Jimmy Fallon this week.

“Not a joke, sadly.

“I feel like if I was reading someone’s memoir I’d just want to hear everything. The things that might be embarrassing about them and the good things so I put them in.”

Wilson is now engaged to fashion designer Ramona Agruma. The couple welcomed daughter Royce Lillian via surrogate in November 2022.

-with AAP