In Rebel Wilson’s mind, the bigger the actress, the bigger the laughs.
“I was like: ‘Oh. That girl’s getting a lot of laughs, a lot easier than me. What is it?’” Wilson, 36, told The Telegraph about performing in her first play alongside a heavier actress.
“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 it I was a bit fatter …’ And then suddenly I was fatter, and doing comedy.”
Wilson credits her ability to gain weight to a hormonal imbalance.
“I saw my size as being an advantage,” she said. “Whereas so many women see it as a disadvantage.”
Even though Wilson gained fame as Fat Amy in the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, whose third installment begins filming this year, she added that she’s been considering slimming down.
“I’ll take six months off, and just do a total transformation,” she quipped. “But then, so many people go: ‘Don’t you do it!’ But I think: ‘Why not?’”
Wilson hasn’t been afraid to discuss her weight in the past. “Bigger girls do better in comedy,” she told Daily Life in January 2015. “I don’t know why. Maybe because people find it easier to laugh.”
“It’s very hard to laugh at someone who’s very attractive, I think. And normally those people don’t have a great personality anyway.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Post's Page Six.