Wilson clung to malaria vision in career pursuit
Actor gets vulnerable about weight loss, sexuality in memoir
About five years ago, when she was 39, actor Rebel Wilson faced a dilemma. She had just had a string of successes, making $20 million for her comic 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 225 pounds — could make it harder to retrieve viable eggs, the doctor suggested. After the appointment, she was devastated and 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.”
In “Rebel Rising,” which Simon & Schuster recently released, Wilson details her struggles with food addiction and writes with disarming candor about intimate episodes from her life. Raised in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, as the eldest of four, Wilson had an unconventional childhood: Her family ran a pet product business and bred show beagles, and Wilson had her first brush with show business as a junior dog handler when she was 8 years old.
Success didn’t come easily. Wilson was rejected five times from Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art and auditioned for nearly 30 screen roles in Hollywood before she was cast in the 2011 comedy “Bridesmaids,” a performance that launched her film career.
The memoir has generated controversy, particularly her account of making the 2016 comedy “The Brothers Grimsby” with Sacha Baron Cohen. Wilson writes that during filming, Baron Cohen made her uncomfortable by asking her to appear nude in the film (they hired a body double instead). She also alleges that he urged her, when they were in character and enacting a sex scene, to stick her finger up his rear end, which she refused to do, while others who were present filmed the encounter on camera phones.
Through a representative, Baron Cohen has denied Wilson’s account. “While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of ‘The Brothers Grimsby,’ ” a representative of Baron Cohen said in a statement.
There are also stunningly personal revelations in “Rebel Rising.” Wilson writes about being a late bloomer who lost her virginity at 35 and had her first orgasm (alone) at age 39. She details her secret romantic relationship with a female professional tennis player, her experience of meeting and falling in love with her fiancée, fashion entrepreneur Ramona Agruma, and having a baby with a surrogate.
This interview with Wilson has been edited for clarity and length.
you write about your fear that losing weight would hurt your career. Have you experienced any negative repercussions or backlash from the weight loss? A:
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. Obviously, I have a sweet tooth. That’s my vice. And in times of stress, I’d been dealing with it by eating. I don’t think that will ever, ever go away.
Q: Which parts of your memoir are you most anxious about going public with? A:
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 about me.” Because really, there was nothing weird or wrong with me. It was just growing up in a very Christian background, and then not really wanting a relationship and focusing on my career. And then I thought, “You know what, if I’m doing a memoir and writing about everything, I’m just going to put that here as well.”
Q: Probably the biggest headlines out of the book so far have been your description of working with Sacha Baron Cohen, who you say humiliated you on set. He has disputed your account, and, recently, footage of the scene that wasn’t in the movie and shows you acting out the sex scene
together in character has been published by The Daily Mail. What do you make of his response? A:
I’m sure they’re never going to release the iPhone footage of him asking me to do it … and me saying, “No, why are you doing this? Why are you asking me to do this? Where’s the director?” Of course, they are not going to release that footage.
Q: What’s your response to his denial? A:
Just knowing his character, I obviously expected that. I knew he wasn’t going to take it proverbially “lying down.” This is not about canceling someone. It’s part of my story — my memoir. And I’m allowed to
write about what happened to me and how that made me feel.
Q: You also write about a strange experience that inspired you to seriously pursue acting when you were living in South Africa and got malaria and had a vision. A:
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.”
I clung to that, despite the constant rejections and how hard it was starting in the theater and performing when there might be 10 people in the crowd. But I saw it, that I was going to be successful. And coming to America, I mean, the odds of making it in the entertainment business, first in my own country, then in Hollywood — I think the odds are better that if I were a guy, I could make it to the NFL. It’s millions and millions to one, but I thought I was the one. There are plenty of Australian actors who are way better than me and haven’t made it over here.
They didn’t have the malaria vision.