‘The Hustle’ star Rebel Wilson throws herself into comedy
Rebel Wilson will do just about anything for a laugh, and she has the bruises to prove her comedic fearlessness.
“I am often putting my body on the line and ending up with a lot of bruises,” Wilson says. “If I think something is funny, I will really go for it. So there are a lot of slips and falls and stuff. Some people will say, ‘Oh, bigger chicks always do that stuff.’ But, you just can’t do jokes in a movie. You have to do physical comedy, especially if it is a big blockbuster comedy film. You have to have all kinds of comedy weapons in your toolkit.”
The Aussie actress shows off her love of physical comedy in “The Hustle,” based on the 1988 feature film “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” She and Anne Hathaway play competing con artists who make a bet to see who gets to continue to stay in the location where there is an endless supply of men to be scammed.
It’s a battle of two different styles as Hathaway’s character is suave and refined while Wilson’s character, Penny, is a hot mess. When Wilson was trying to decide how to play the character she knew the key was to make her appear so incompetent that people would underestimate her. It was an easy approach for Wilson to take.
“I actually find that in real life, I get underestimated all the time,” Wilson says. “What is it about me? Is it my Australian-ness? Is it my blond hair? What is it? It’s just that people have perceived ideas about me before they meet me.
“So to that end, I definitely wanted to make Penny Australian to be similar to me. After that, it was a matter of making a distinction between mine and Anne’s character. Penny is more the low-rent con man. For her, it’s more her and her personality.”
During filming of “The Hustle,” Wilson and Hathaway would come to the set ready to do the scene as written. After that was done, they got to do what Wilson called a “fun take,” where they were both allowed to do whatever came to mind.
Just because Wilson is fearless when it comes to work doesn’t mean she’s reckless. As she did with her last film, “Isn’t It Romantic,” Wilson is one of the producers on “The Hustle.” She took on the role to make sure she had a say in the project from start to finish.
“If I have an idea for a picture, I get to shepherd it through the development,” Wilson says. “But the biggest part of being a producer comes in post-production. Movies are shown to audiences and changes are made. There have been other movies where I was not the producer that I would get upset about.
“In ‘Pitch Perfect 3’ I had a number cut that I thought was really good, but I think they didn’t have faith in it. If I had been the producer, I wouldn’t have made that call. So now, when I have more control over it, I can say I think this joke is worthy so I want it in. I really like sitting at the table having those discussions because we have all worked so hard. And in the end, it all comes down to comedy taste and I think I have a really good commercial comedy taste.”