Rebel Wilson Gained Weight to Get More Roles

Over the weekend, The Telegraph published an interview with Rebel Wilson about her beginnings as an actor and lawyer(!) before finding success in Hollywood with films like "Bridesmaids" and "Pitch Perfect."

When Wilson first started out, she took more dramatic roles. However, as she discovered in Australia as part of an ensemble for the play "Spurboard," the audience wasn't buying it. Below, she describes how the crowd reacted to her as a serious actress, and the in-house competition that led her to towards more comedic roles.

“There’s something about me that people like laughing at,” she says. But if she was going to be funny, then she had to be the funniest. At the time, her build was athletic–she played tennis, and had strong arms, she says, but she wasn’t particularly fat. When she wrote her first play, she cast alongside herself another girl, who was bigger than her. “And I was like: ‘Oh. That girl’s getting a lot of laughs, a lot easier than me. What 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.”

Wilson claims when weight gain was from a hormonal imbalance started happening, and the roles followed shortly after. Still, Wilson doesn't intend to gain more weight for work, Instead, she loses weight in between acting roles:

“...I’ll take six months off, and just do a total transformation. But then, so many people go: ‘Don’t you do it!’ But I think: ‘Why not?’”

Wilson is known to exaggerate details of her life. Do you think her claim to weight gain is one of them? Let Strutter know by email: readstrutter@gmail.com.