Hugh Grant has spoken out after reaching a settlement with the publisher of The Sun newspaper, who he had accused of illegally obtaining information about him.
On Wednesday morning, it was announced that the Bafta winner and News Group Newspapers (NGN) had settled their ongoing legal dispute, details of which were not made public.
The Notting Hill actor shared a thread of posts on X (formerly Twitter) after the settlement was made public, claiming that accepting NGN’s offer of an “enormous sum of money” was not something he initially wanted to do, before going on to explain his reasons for doing so.
“News Group are claiming they are entirely innocent of the things I had accused the Sun of doing – phone hacking, unlawful information gathering, landline tapping, the burglary of my flat and office, the bugging of my car, the illegal blagging of medical records, lies, perjury and the destruction of evidence,” he wrote.
“As is common with entirely innocent people, they are offering me an enormous sum of money to keep this matter out of court. I don’t want to accept this money or settle. I would love to see all the allegations that they deny tested in court.
“But the rules around civil litigation mean that if I proceed to trial and the court awards me damages that are even a penny less than the settlement offer, I would have to pay the legal costs of both sides.”
Hugh continued: “My lawyers tell me that that is exactly what would most likely happen here.
“Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers are very expensive. So even if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching £10 million in costs. I’m afraid I am shying at that fence.”
“Murdoch’s settlement money has a stink and I refuse to let this be hush money,” Hugh continued. “I have spent the best part of 12 years fighting for a free press that does not distort the truth, abuse ordinary members of the public or hold elected MPs to ransom in pursuit of newspaper barons’ personal profit and political power”.
Because of this, Hugh said he’d the money would be “repurposed via groups like Hacked Off into the general campaign to expose the worst excesses of our oligarch-owned press”.
NGN had previously “strongly denied” the “various historic allegations” made by the Paddington 2 star.
Last year, a judge rejected NGN’s attempt to throw out the case before it went to trial, after they claimed Hugh didn’t bring his claims within a six-year time limit.
As a result, Hugh’s specific phone hacking claims were dismissed, but the case was allowed to proceed on the other allegations as the actor claimed relevant information had only come to light more recently.