The Biggest Revelations From Rebel Wilson’s Memoir
Rebel Wilson’s new book, Rebel Rising, has only been out for a few days and is already proving to be one of the biggest celebrity memoirs of the year. The Australian actor does not hold back in her writing, sharing everything about her rocky upbringing, her fertility journey, and, yes, all the details about Sacha Baron Cohen. Here are the biggest takeaways from Rebel Rising.
Sacha Baron Cohen gets a chapter
The biggest headlines coming out of Rebel Rising have concerned Wilson’s allegations about Sacha Baron Cohen. In 2016, Wilson co-starred alongside Baron Cohen in The Brothers Grimsby, and she claims that he sexually harassed her on set. Prior to the release of Rebel Rising, Wilson shared a video on Instagram in which she said she had “worked with a massive asshole” and that there was a whole chapter dedicated to him in her book. She later revealed that said “massive asshole” was Baron Cohen. She also claimed that the Borat star was “trying to threaten” her and attempting to stop the book from being published.
“It felt like every time I’d speak to SBC, he’d mention that he wanted me to go naked in a future scene,” Wilson wrote in Rebel Rising. “I was like, ‘Ha, I don’t do nudity, Sacha.’”
Later in the shoot, Wilson was told she needed to be on set to film an “additional scene.” Wilson writes that when she arrived to shoot the scene, Baron Cohen pulled his pants down and said, “Okay, now I want you to stick your finger up my ass.”
“I was now scared. I wanted to get out of there, so I finally compromised: I slapped him on the ass and improvised a few lines as the character,” Wilson wrote.
Baron Cohen has denied any of this happened. Prior to the book’s release, a representative for the actor told People, “While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of The Brothers Grimsby.”
Wilson wrote that the experience led to her refusing to promote the movie at all. “That was really the only power I had left in this situation,” she said.
Curiously, publication of Wilson’s memoir has been delayed indefinitely in her home country of Australia, as well as in the U.K. and New Zealand. “Publication of Rebel Rising has been delayed but we have no further comment,” a representative for HarperCollins AU told Yahoo Lifestyle. The outlet also reported that fans who preordered the book were refunded and their orders were canceled. It’s unclear whether this has anything to do with Baron Cohen or Wilson’s claims that he was trying to stop the book’s publication.
We learn a lot about Wilson’s sex life
Wilson also discusses her status as a “late bloomer.” According to the book, she didn’t have sex until she was 35, when she slept with the actor Mickey Gooch Jr. (who apparently was unaware that she was a virgin at the time). “Micks, I know this might be news to you if you are reading this, but yes I lost my virginity to you,” Wilson wrote. She later told the New York Times that Gooch was the first person to read Rebel Rising, so he has since found out.
“Life IS short. I didn’t want to live my life without experiencing sex. Experiencing love. I put it out into the universe that I was finally ready. I was going to feel the fear and just do it,” Wilson wrote, explaining that she was compelled to lose her virginity following her mom’s breast-cancer diagnosis.
While Wilson had sex for the first time at 35, it wasn’t until four years later that she had her first orgasm, another experience she described in the book. In 2019, Wilson was 39 and experiencing a “Year of Love,” going on dates with around 50 men and having sex with two of them. Her year of exploration led to her doing some introspection about her relationship to sex.
“I’d never really learned about orgasms,” wrote Wilson. “When I’d had sex over the past few years, I’d never really thought about my pleasure. It was more about the guy climaxing, and then pretty quickly sex was over. And while I had experienced pleasure, I don’t think at this point I’d truly had an orgasm. I might’ve thought I had.”
Wilson took matters into her own hands, listening to podcasts about sex and buying sex toys. “I truly experienced an orgasm for the first time at 39 just by myself,” Wilson wrote, adding that she thought to herself, “Is this what I was missing out on?”
“My research for my Year of Love taught me that there was so much more to sex than just the guy getting off,” Wilson wrote. “I should have been orgasming too. That should have been a priority.”
Her team didn’t want her to lose weight
Wilson writes a lot about her body and weight in Rebel Rising, disclosing that her agents preferred her not to lose weight. “The agency liked me fat because they got hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission for each film where I played the fat funny girl,” she wrote. Wilson said that it felt that she was in a “multimillion-dollar pigeonhole” because of her body.
Wilson, who also details her PCOS diagnosis in the book, wanted to lose weight after her fertility doctor suggested it might be easier to retrieve her eggs. She lost the weight and had her daughter, Royce, via surrogate in 2022. In an interview with the New York Times, Wilson said that slimming down lost her fans.
“There were some people that were like, Oh, we don’t think she’s funny anymore, or, Now she’s lost me as a fan because I can’t relate to her anymore,” Wilson said.
She thinks Adele hates her
Wilson acknowledged that she has never confirmed this, but she wrote that she believes Adele hates her because people used to get them confused.
“There was a moment when she was bigger, and some people would confuse us for one another. I’d be in England and people would come up and say, ‘Oh, I love your new album,’” Wilson wrote.
“I am assuming, because to be fair I’ve never asked her (she always quickly turns away from me at the few events where I’ve seen her, as if my fatness might rub off on her if I were near her for more than thirty seconds), that she didn’t like being compared to ‘Fat Amy,’” Wilson wrote.
Wilson’s family life was complicated
Wilson had a complicated relationship with her father. She wrote that he was physically abusive and that her mother kicked him out of the house in 1997. “She’d finally mustered the courage after all those awful years and wised up to the fact that she deserved more,” Wilson wrote.
She kept a distant relationship with her father for the rest of his life, but was still deeply affected when he died of a heart attack in 2013. “Even though we had complicated feelings toward my father, it was so tragic,” she wrote. “He’d literally just cleaned up his whole life, he was trying, and now he was dead.” Wilson attended his funeral and slipped an emotional note into his coffin.
“To dear Dad,” Wilson wrote, “I’ve said a lot that you were never really part of my acting career, but on reflection, you were and are. There’s a cheekiness, a dodginess and entrepreneurial-ness, a darkness, a creative-ness, a bravado-ness that comes from you and your side of the family.”
“I thank you greatly for that,” she continued. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to bring so much pain to Mum and us kids. You didn’t mean to lose your temper and do spiteful and hateful things.”
She concluded the letter by writing that she forgave her father, and that she would “strive to find love” and “no longer be afraid of it.”
Guess how much she made for Bridesmaids?
Whatever number you guessed, it’s much lower. Wilson says the small supporting role that launched her career in America paid only $3,500. She wrote that even though the money went straight to covering the dues required to join SAG-AFTRA, it “didn’t matter to me.”
Two weeks after the movie premiered, Wilson had booked six other movie roles. One of those was for Pitch Perfect, a franchise that led to Wilson taking home a $10 million paycheck for its third installment. So it all worked out in the end.