About five years ago, when she was 39, actress Rebel Wilson faced a dilemma. He just had a string of successes, earning $20 million for his comic roles in “Pitch Perfect 3,” “Isn’t It Romantic” and “The Hustle.” But a visit to a fertility doctor filled her with self-doubt.
Her weight – then 225 pounds – could make it harder to get viable eggs, the doctor suggested. After the appointment, she felt down and called her talent agent and said she planned to get healthy. His agent was not happy.
“The agency liked me fat because they got hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission for every movie where I played the fat funny girl,” she wrote in her new memoir, “Rebel Rising.” Losing weight, he worries, could jeopardize his “multimillion-dollar pigeonhole.”
In “Rebel Rising,” released by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday, 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: His family ran a pet product business and bred show beagles, and Wilson had his first brush with show business as a junior dog handler when he was 8.
Success does not come easily. Wilson was rejected from Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art five times, 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 already generated controversy, especially his account of the making of the 2016 comedy “The Brothers Grimsby” with Sacha Baron Cohen. Wilson wrote 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 said that he encouraged her, when they were in character and doing a sex scene, to stick his finger in her behind, which she refused to do, while others who were present filmed the encounter on camera phones. Through a representative, Baron Cohen denied Wilson’s account. “While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these patently false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage and witness accounts from those present before , during and after the production of ‘The Brothers Grimsby,'” a representative for Baron Cohen said in a statement.
There are also stunning 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 39. She details her secret romantic relationship with a female professional tennis player, the his experience meeting and falling in love with his girlfriend, the fashion entrepreneur Ramona Agruma, and having a baby with a surrogate.
In a recent interview in Midtown Manhattan, Wilson talked about how her weight loss has affected her career and public image, how her family’s beagles inspired her to pursue acting and how it brought her of the hallucination caused by Hollywood fever.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
In the first chapter, you wrote about your fear that losing weight would hurt your career. Have you experienced any negative side effects or backlash from losing weight?
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 will understand my journey with weight and health. It’s obvious that I have a sweet tooth. That’s my vice. And in times of stress, I eat it. I never thought it would go away.
Which parts of your memoir are you most excited to make public?
The part about losing my virginity at 35. That’s something absolutely nobody knows about. And I was like, Should I put this in the book? But then I thought, Maybe there are other people out there who are late bloomers who might find comfort in that fact about me. Because honestly, there is nothing strange 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’ll just put that here too.
You wrote in the book that you never even told Mickey Gooch Jr., your ex-boyfriend, that he was your first.
Well, he was the first to read it. So he knows now.
You describe your romantic relationship with a female professional tennis player, which has prompted a lot of speculation about who the person is. Are you worried that you might be flirting with that person or putting their privacy at risk?
There are some rumors out there as to who it is. But I don’t think there is a fortune teller. And I don’t want to ruin their privacy with my memoir.
But this is an important part of your story, in terms of your discovery that you are attracted to women.
Yes. I thought, You don’t just date a girl overnight. I never thought I would be in a relationship with Ramona if I hadn’t met the tennis player. And that opened my heart, I think, to dating a woman.
Perhaps the biggest headline in the book so far is your description of working with Sacha Baron Cohen, who you say humiliated you on set. He disputed your account, and recently the footage of the scene that was not in the movie and which shows you performing the sex scene together with the character, was published by The Daily Mail. What do you make of his response?
I’m sure they’ll never release the iPhone footage of him asking me to do this, sticking my finger up his ass, and me saying, “No, why are you doing this? Why are you asking me to do this? Where’s the director?” Of course they won’t release that footage.
What was your response to his rejection?
Just knowing his character, I obviously expected that. I know he won’t take it, so to speak, “lying down.” It’s not about canceling someone. This is part of my story — my memory. And it allowed me to write about what happened to me, and how I felt.
You are very candid about money and describe how you were able to negotiate $10 million for “Pitch Perfect 3” after learning that the studio did a market research survey showing how much people love your character, “Fat Amy.” I found it refreshing to read about how much you make, which some successful people don’t feel comfortable talking about.
Universal Studios is fantastic, but did they make a ton of money from the “Pitch Perfect” movies? Yes. So despite my absolute love for all those people at Universal, did I use that action to my advantage? Yes. And at the 11th hour, I said, “You know, that’s a great offer of $9 million. But I need one more to make it 10.” That’s a big milestone when you’re an actress. To get an eight-figure offer, for a woman, is huge. Sometimes women don’t want to talk about it. Whereas I think don’t have any issues with guys saying they’re getting $20 million in a movie.
There are some really funny stories from your childhood, like how your mom raised beagles in your garage and auditioned them for commercials and TV shows. I wonder if those beagles are part of why you got into show business.
In a way, yes, because they are the stars of the family. They have agents. My first thing on TV was a show called “Burke’s Backyard” in Australia. The dogs were featured, and I was just in the background, when I was young. I first got into musicals because our dog auditioned for “42nd Street” and didn’t get the part, and my mom really wanted to know what the dog got. And so I went to see this thing called “a musical” at 14, and I was like, Whoa, this is really cool. If it wasn’t for the dogs, I would never have experienced anything like that.
But there were many points in my childhood where I resented the dogs, because the dogs were the stars, and the dogs got as much love and attention as I wanted.
You also wrote about a strange experience that inspired you to pursue acting seriously, when you were living in South Africa and contracted malaria and had a vision.
It’s a complete delusion that I’m an actor and I’ve won an Academy Award. It changed the entire trajectory of my life. When some people say, “But how do you go on?,” or “You always have this self-belief,” I say, “Because I’ve seen it happen.”
I stuck with it, despite the constant rejection and how hard it was, starting in the theater and performing when there were maybe 10 people in the crowd. But I saw it, that I would be successful. And when it comes 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 man, I could get into the NFL It’s millions and millions to one, but I thought I was the one. There are many artists in Australia who are better than me and have never made it here.
Maybe because they didn’t get malaria.
They have no malaria vision.
