Rebel Wilson‘s career experienced a 360 after her weight loss.
The Australian actress best known for her comedic roles in Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids said she was offered “more serious roles” after she shed about 80 pounds in 2020. “From that point, I started getting offered more serious roles,” Wilson said during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s Ben +1. “And I did this British indie movie that was really serious about traumatic brain injury, and then now I’m playing Lady Capulet.”
Wilson will appear as Lady Capulet in Juliet & Romeo, the musical drama romance based on the classic Shakespeare romance, in theaters May 9. Jamie Ward and Clara Rugaard play the star-crossed lovers in the update, which also stars Jason Isaacs and Rupert Everett.
“I think I kind of untypecast myself by losing weight,” Wilson said. “I mean, I loved being the bigger, funny girl, loved playing Fat Amy in the Pitch Perfect movies. It was so cool and that still is me in so many respects, but I guess people . . . started to see me a bit differently.” Wilson also noted that she always intended to be a dramatic actress.
“I wanted to be like Dame Judi Dench and be really serious,” she said. “It’s just I had something that people would like to laugh at. And then Nicole Kidman gave me this scholarship to come to America and specialize in comedy, and so that’s what I did. And then when I came to Hollywood, I was just the full comedy girl. But now it’s kind of like going back to my roots as an actress and doing some serious stuff.”
Wilson is an alum of the Australian Theatre for Young People, where she won a scholarship launched by Kidman in 2002 that allowed her to enroll in the New York Film Academy and the Second City Training Centre.
Peter Iovino/Universal
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The star has been candid about her weight loss, sharing that she decided to embark on the journey after her fertility doctor said it would help increase chance of success for in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. Wilson welcomed a baby girl via surrogate in November 2022.
She previously shared that she received “a lot of pushback” during the early days of that journey from her team in Hollywood, who did not understand why she would shed the pounds when she was “earning millions of dollars playing the funny fat girl.”
“Basically, no one apart from my mom wanted me to lose weight,” Wilson told The Sunday Times last year. “People thought I’d lose my pigeonhole in my career, playing the fat funny character, and they wanted me to continue in that.”