Nathanael Cooper

Well, interestingly for the Deb, it actually began as a stage production at the Australian Theatre for Young People.

And I think its first production was in 2023, 2022, somewhere around there.

It's written by an Australian writer, performer, comedian, glamazon, Hannah Riley.

She was coming to court every day.

And one of our favourite things was what's Hannah going to wear today?

So she wrote this musical comedy called The Deb.

It premiered in the Rebel Theatre at the Australian Theatre for Young People.

Rebel saw it and loved it and decided to turn it into a film.

And then in September 2023, they began formal pre-production of the film and that collided with so many matters that are before the courts at the moment.

There are a couple of things happening at the same time in September 2023.

One of them was a dispute between Hannah Riley and Rebel Wilson over the writing credits.

Rebel wanted a writing credit for the film.

That went into arbitration with the Australian Writers Guild.

There was also some argy-bargy over the budget with the film's producers.

So there were some items that appeared in the budget that Rebel wasn't happy with.

And then on the 5th of September, 2023, Amanda Ghost, one of the producers of the film, and Charlotte McInnes, who was playing the lead role of Maeve.

Charlotte was staying with Amanda in an apartment in Bondi.

And after some studio sessions that day in the early evening, they went for a swim at Bondi.

And Amanda suffers from a medical condition where she has a strong reaction to extreme temperatures.

So extreme cold in this case, she got out of the water and had an anaphylactic reaction as she describes it.