Rebel Wilson has revealed that her strict Pitch Perfect movie contract prevented her from losing weight.
The Aussie actor played ‘Fat Amy’ in the 2012, 2015 and 2017 musical comedies, making her a household name around the world.
“I couldn’t lose a massive amount of weight because I was in the contracts for that movie,” Wilson said on the Call Her Daddy podcast.
“You can’t lose. I think it’s not more than 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms), or gain more than 10 pounds. You have to kind of stay at the weight. It’s in your contract.”
Wilson embarked on a ‘year of health’ in 2020, shedding 37 kilograms thanks to a healthy and active lifestyle.
She said she had wanted to start her health journey much earlier, in an effort to improve her fertility as she approached her 40th birthday – but waited until the franchise “seemed like it was over”.
“I went to see a fertility doctor and he was like, ‘Well you know you’d have a much better chance with fertility if you were healthier’. And I was like, ‘Oh God, what’s he talking about’?” she said.
“It really hit me hard because I was living a fantastic bigger life.”
No regrets
Wilson has no regrets about playing Fat Amy, who she described as “ballsy” and the “best character in the movie”.
But she said she did struggle with being typecast in those sorts of comedic roles.
“I was stereotyped in playing that fat, funny friend, which is so hard because I love those roles. I love doing the roles. I love those characters,” Wilson said.
“But then I did want to do more things but I felt like being the bigger girl you’re just more pigeonholed.”
Unable to change her weight, Wilson said she struggled with confidence and her love life suffered.
“I didn’t have a great love life so I was normally at home at night eating ice cream, eating chocolate or whatever, which was comforting at the time but it wasn’t like a great move overall,” she said.
“So slowly as I was turning 40, I then became healthier.”
Although Wilson was determined to undergo a major health transformation, she said she faced resistance from her own team.
“I got a lot of push back from my team actually here in Hollywood when I said, ‘OK, I’m going to do this year of health and I feel like I’m really going to physically transform and change my life,’” Wilson told the BBC in 2021.
“And they were like, ‘Why? Why would you want to do that?’ Because I was earning millions of dollars being the funny fat girl and being that person.”
‘A miracle’
Wilson made major life changes since the third and final Pitch Perfect movie came out in 2017.
Along with losing a great deal of weight, Wilson welcomed a baby girl, Royce, via surrogate in November 2022.
In an interview on KIIS1065 on Wednesday, Wilson described motherhood as a “miracle”.
“I tried with one surrogate to have the baby and sadly the embryo miscarried which is really … You get so excited when it takes and it was really sad,” she said.
“I was mourning that at the time, but then to have a second embryo, it was amazing.”
Wilson met her fiancee, fashion designer Ramona Agruma, a few months into her second surrogate’s pregnancy.
When she shared the news with Agruma, she said on Call Her Daddy that she was “just so great” about her plans to become a mother.
“Ramona was right there at the birth,” Wilson said. “We watched the baby pop out together.”
