Cameron Diaz, Fox win ratings appeal for ‘The Other Woman’

They say if you want something done right, do it yourself. That approach just worked for Cameron Diaz, who represented her upcoming movie “The Other Woman” and successfully appealed the MPAA’s Classification and Rating Appeals Board to overturn its initial R rating.

The film is now rated PG-13 for “mature thematic material, sexual references and language,” CARA announced Wednesday. Emma Watts, president of production at 20th Century Fox, represented the film with Diaz in the appeal process.

Opening April 25, “The Other Woman” stars Diaz as a woman who discovers that her boyfriend (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is married, then teams up with the man’s wife (Leslie Mann) and other mistress (Kate Upton) to get revenge on him.

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Details about whether any changes were made to the film were not immediately available from Fox.

Last month at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Diaz expressed frustration with the ratings board, which she perceived to be biased against women doing edgy comedy.

While speaking to a group of reporters on the red carpet about “The Other Woman,” Diaz said, “It’s really unfortunate that [members of the ratings board] see things that women do a little bit more strict — they judge us a little bit more than they do men. A lot of the things that they’re judging — like we say, ‘You need to close your vagina.’ Like, you can’t say ‘vagina’ ... What’s wrong with a vagina? Guys make reference to their parts all the times nowadays without getting the R rating.”

Although successful rating appeals are historically somewhat rare, the trend may be shifting. Lionsgate’s “Draft Day,” the Weinstein Co.’s “Philomena” and Screen Media’s “A Birder’s Guide to Everything” all got R ratings changed to PG-13.

Times staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.

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