In the 1970s, it was all about Olivia Newton-John, with her sweatband and iridescent Lycra. Then came Kylie Minogue, cute in dungarees. Britain, it seems, has a habit of clutching petite, bubbly, blond Australian entertainers to its collective heart. But the current Aussie favourite is quite a different proposition.
Rebel Wilson is naughty, witty and brash, and definitely not petite. At 36, the comic actor from Sydney, who made her name with supporting roles in Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect, has quickly become a larger-than-life feature of the comedy firmament. As a carefully calibrated, living and breathing national stereotype, Wilson is proving as difficult to ignore as Barry Humphries/Dame Edna Everage and Crocodile Dundee himself, Paul Hogan, once were.
Following a succession of attention-grabbing cameos and audacious personal appearances at award ceremonies and as a guest on chatshows, last week Wilson announced that she is about to take to the stage in the West End of London for the first time. She has always been, she told fans, more than just a comedian, having been inspired to study acting by a childhood love of musical theatre.
So this summer Wilson will take over the role of the lovelorn and jaded Miss Adelaide in the hit production of Guys and Dolls. The switch of cast during the summer holidays is likely to guarantee a boost in ticket sales to teenagers.
“At 14, I saw my first musical, 42nd Street, after one of my family’s dogs had unsuccessfully auditioned to be in it. It blew me away and I’ve loved musical theatre ever since,” Wilson said last week, also citing her theatre training and experience on the Australian stage.
This Saturday, to prove her stagecraft, Wilson will also step out into the limelight at the Hollywood Bowl to take another leading role, as Ursula, opposite Sara Bareilles in a live performance of Disney’s musical The Little Mermaid, backed by a 71-piece orchestra.
In Britain, Wilson is to be spotted gracing the front cover of Marie Claire’s July edition, to herald her screen appearance in the film version of Absolutely Fabulous, alongside her English comic heroine. “As a teenager I’d put Ab Fab on instead of working,” she said last week. “Jennifer Saunders was the first woman I ever saw on TV who wrote and performed her own material.”
The teenage Rebel – born Melanie – must have done some schoolwork however, finding quiet time away from her sisters Liberty and Annachi, and brother Ryot, because she has two degrees, including one in law – facts that might faze her army of young followers.
They know her best as Fat Amy in the 2012 film Pitch Perfect and in the 2015 sequel, films that together have netted $400m in box office receipts. Her bumptious, prat-falling, over-confident character in the films was crucial to their success and in the past year Wilson has broken through to a wider audience with scene-stealing performances in the anti-romantic comedy How to Be Single with Dakota Johnson and in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Grimsby.
Voluptuous and rude, Wilson is a reliably saucy booking. She amused crowds at the Baftas with her call for “diverse members” and she has frequently shown off her more unexpected skills – clever rapping. Last week, she stormed on to the set of America’s The Late, Late Show, putting would-be rappers James Corden, the show’s host, and actor David Schwimmer in their place with ease.
So what, for fans, is the appeal? Well, Wilson is more than an Australian novelty act. She can play other nationalities, for a start. Those who missed her as Matt Lucas’s sister in Bridesmaids may have seen her comic turn as a romantically available cockney security guard in the Ben Stiller comedy Night at the Museum 4. She also wrote and starred in one season of her own sitcom, Super Fun Night, in the US.
However, there was a momentary stumble in Wilson’s apparently effortless glide to the top a year ago. The press in Australia, perhaps piqued by her speedy rise, pointed out that she had blurred details of her age – hardly unusual in her profession – and then took the magnifying glass to some of her kookier stories, especially one about taking up acting after a malaria-induced hallucination in Mozambique in which she saw herself receiving an Oscar.
The Australian magazine, Woman’s Day, ran a story claiming that Wilson had been less than truthful about her background. This month, Wilson formally complained that the articles had portrayed her as a serial liar and had cost her lucrative film roles. Filing a defamation writ in the supreme court of Victoria in Australia, the actor said her reputation and credit had suffered.
She told an interviewer: “An actress has a playing age and can play within that, so why does it matter what her actual age is? I don’t get that. My movie was No 1 and [the Australian press] tried to find anything they could that was bad on me.
“It’s a business thing because you don’t want to be like, ‘Oh, I’m 29, about to be 30 coming to America, great.’ That’s not a positive thing to do when you’re an actress in Hollywood.”
There is, she claims, nothing phoney about the malarial fever story. “People thought it was a comedy bit. I’m like yeah, as if I friggin’ made that up. I almost died.”
The Wilson line on her mix of talents is that she was an “unusually shy” child, with an attitude “bordering on a social disorder”. To combat this her mother, a dog breeder, drove her, kicking and screaming, to a community acting class. “I was holding on to the car door and crying,” says Wilson. “She had to peel me off the car. She’s like, ‘I’ll pick you up in two hours.’ And she left me.’” The rest may become showbiz history, one day.
The actor regularly references her size, as a kind of challenge to modern etiquette, and she is clearly entertained by the idea that she must be stupid because of her ample form. “They are like ‘that Rebel Wilson, not much up there, but plenty here’,” she said recently, pointing first at her head and then at her breasts. Wilson appears to be at home in her physique: using it to poke fun at assumptions about sex appeal. “I’ve always tried to use my brain to get places,” she said. “There’s so many glamorous people in Hollywood, I just never want to compete with that... even the men get their skin lasered.”
Yet for a while she was a spokeswoman for the Australian weight loss and nutrition company Jenny Craig and managed to shed a few pounds. This business relationship came to an end in 2013 when, in contrast to the conventional pressure put on Hollywood stars to maintain peak fitness between shooting films in a franchise, Wilson had to agree to stay large until Pitch Perfect 3, due out next year, is complete.
Wilson is evangelical about the single life, but has sometimes questioned how success affects her chances of meeting a life partner. She told Marie Claire that she is independent spirited, “to the point where I’m too independent. If you’re a successful woman you want to find the right person, but you don’t necessarily need them... I don’t know whether the right person is in Hollywood – you only meet actors or musicians here.”
Last year she moved out of a flat in chic West Hollywood that she had shared since 2012 with her Bridesmaids co-star, Lucas.
“It means she’s no longer sneezing because I think she was a bit allergic to my dogs, but we had fun and we are still bosom buddies,” said Lucas, responding to Wilson’s “decision to become a huge movie star and buy a house”. After being cast as siblings, he added, the pair were often taken as “brother and sister, husband and wife, the same person, or all three”.
The actor told the Canadian magazine Flare this month that the influence of her mother has persuaded her to wait before starting a family. “The saddest thing in the world is when you see a woman who is really smart and a go-getter and then she gets married too young or has kids too young and doesn’t really fulfil her dreams.”
The plan, instead, is to make a series of “women-driven” films, Wilson said, and she has started a production company with that in mind. She calculates that she now has the power to make a difference. Remakes of the Goldie Hawn comedy Private Benjamin, and of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, are both in train. “I’m at the point where I can develop projects to star in because they trust me enough to give me, like, millions of dollars,” she says. “It’s so much fun.” For others too, she must hope.
THE WILSON FILE
Born Melanie Wilson, 2 March 1980 , in Sydney. Her mother is a professional dog handler and her siblings are Ryot, Liberty and Annachi.
Best of times In demand as the “naughty girl” in the entertainment industry, next month, after film successes, she returns to live performance at the Hollywood Bowl and in the West End of London.
Worst of times Accused by Australian press last year of fabricating her backstory, including not being honest about her age, and elaborating an incident in Africa. She disputes the charge that she is a serial liar.
What she says “The only thing that would make this better is if Zac Efron took off his shirt right now and came and kissed me. Do you want to give me an Australian kiss now, Zac? It’s like a French kiss but down under,” as she won an MTV movie award.
What others say “But when we met it was like complete synchronicity, we’re both very laid-back and we’re also quite driven professionally and I see that in her and she sees that in me but we’re not competitive.” British comic Matt Lucas.
