Rebel Wilson Says She Felt Like She Had To Gain Weight To Get Famous
Whenever a star is born in Hollywood, it only takes a second before the plastic surgery and diet rumors start flying around, but Rebel Wilson made a name by doing the opposite.
Instead, of losing weight to get famous, Rebel Wislon says she actually gained weight.
See, before Rebel Wilson was famous, she describes her build as “athletic.” In a new interview with The Daily Telegraph, she reveals she had strong arms, and legs built for running around a tennis court, but she wasn’t “particularly fat.”
And then, one day while she was doing a play that she wrote in Australia, Wilson cast herself opposite a woman who was just a bit heavier than she was, and had an epiphany.
“Oh. That girl’s getting a lot of laughs, a lot easier than me,” Wilson recalls. “Why is it? Because I don’t think there’s much difference in talent. And I remember distinctly thinking: ‘I think it’s because she’s fatter.’ And then, I don’t know if it was mega-conscious, but I thought: ‘How can I get more laughs? Maybe if I was a bit fatter….’ And then suddenly I was fatter, and doing comedy.”
While on the one hand, it’s empowering to hear a woman offer an alternative to round-the-clock dieting and brutal sessions at the gym, it’s also disheartening because at the end of the day, Rebel Wilson still felt she needed to change herself in order to make it.
And the sad thing is, she’s probably right.
I remember being told in an audition class back in college, that if you’re ever struggling with your weight, you should either make a decision to lose 10 pounds or gain 10 pounds, because it’s much just easier to get cast that way.
Which is fucked up, but then again, very Hollywood.
It’s an inconvenient truth that in comedy, a person’s fatness is often used as its own joke, and if you’ve seen Pitch Perfect, you know that Wilson plays a character whose name is literally Fat Amy.
We just can’t win, can we?
[H/T The Daily Telegraph]
