Vulnerable Memoir From Rebel Wilson
About five years ago, when she was 39, the actress Rebel Wilson had just had a string of successes, having made $20 million for her roles in “Pitch Perfect 3,” “Isn’t It Romantic” and “The Hustle.” But a visit to a fertility doctor had filled her with self-doubt.
Her weight — then over 100 kilograms — could make it harder to retrieve viable eggs, the doctor said. After the appointment, she called her talent agent and said she planned to get healthier. Her agent was not thrilled.
“The agency liked me fat because they got hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission for each film where I played the fat funny girl,” she writes in her new memoir, “Rebel Rising.” Losing weight, she worried, could jeopardize her “multimillion-dollar pigeonhole.”
Ms. Wilson writes with disarming candor. Raised in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, as the eldest of four, she had an unconventional childhood: Her family bred show beagles, and Ms. Wilson had her first brush with show business as a junior dog handler when she was 8.
Ms. Wilson was rejected five times from Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, and auditioned for nearly 30 roles in Hollywood before she was cast in the 2011 comedy “Bridesmaids,” a performance that launched her film career.
There are personal revelations in “Rebel Rising.” Ms. Wilson writes about losing her virginity at 35. She details her secret relationship with a female professional tennis player, her experience of falling in love with her fiancée, the fashion entrepreneur Ramona Agruma, and having a baby with a surrogate.
In a recent interview, Ms. Wilson spoke about how her weight loss has affected her career and public image. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
In the first chapter, you write about your fear that losing weight would hurt your career. Have you experienced any negative repercussions?
There were some people that were like, oh, we don’t think she’s funny anymore, or, now she’s lost me as a fan because I can’t relate to her anymore. But I think if they read the book they’ll understand my journey with weight and health.
What are you most anxious about going public with?
The part about losing my virginity at 35. That was something that absolutely nobody knew. And I was like, should I put it in the book? But then I thought, maybe there will be other people out there who were late bloomers who might find solace in that fact.
You describe your romantic relationship with a female professional tennis player. Did you worry at all that you might be outing that person?
I don’t think anyone would ever guess. And I don’t want their privacy to be breached by my memoir.
But it is an important part of your story.
I don’t think I would be in a relationship with Ramona if I’d not met the tennis player. And that opened my heart, I guess, to dating a woman.
You describe how you were able to negotiate $10 million for “Pitch Perfect 3” after you learned that the studio did a market research survey that showed how much people loved your character, “Fat Amy.”
Universal Studios are incredible, but did they make a ton of money from the “Pitch Perfect” movies? Yes. So despite me absolutely loving all those folks at Universal, did I use that leverage to my advantage? Yes.
You also write about a strange experience that inspired you when you were living in South Africa and got malaria.
It was a full-blown hallucination that I was an actress and I had won an Academy Award. It changed the whole trajectory of my life. When some people would say, “But how did you keep going?,” or “You always seemed to have this self-belief,” I would go, “Because I saw it happen.”