Rebel Wilson has opened up about what it took to play Patricia “Fat Amy” Hobart in the Pitch Perfect films, revealing that her contract for the series restricted her from losing weight. As a result, the actor put off making lifestyle changes until the franchise “seemed like it was over.”
“I couldn’t lose a massive amount of weight because I was in the contracts for that movie,” Wilson said on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. “You can’t lose — I think it’s not more than 10 pounds or gain more than 10 pounds. You have to kind of stay at the weight. It’s in your contract.”
She continued, “I’d been thinking for a while I wanted to get healthier. 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. But then I did want to do more things, but I felt like being the bigger girl, you’re just more pigeonholed.”
As Wilson explained earlier in the episode, she had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in college and “rapidly” gained 100 pounds. This led to her playing parts as “the fat, funny friend” as an actor. However, she embraced “body-positive” roles and remembered thinking Fat Amy was “the best character in the whole movie” after receiving the script.
“To me, that was kind of distinctive about the character and I loved playing her so much,” she remembered. “We had the best fun on Pitch Perfect movies. To me, it was just awesome to play her because she’s just so confident and ballsy. Part of it is me, a lot of Pitch Perfect is not really acting, it’s kind of just like us hanging out.”
Wilson broke out in Hollywood thanks to her performances in 2011’s Bridesmaids and the Pitch Perfect trilogy, which ran from 2012 through 2017. She later earned critical acclaim for her performance as Fräulein Rahm in Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit.
As for the Pitch Perfect franchise, it recently expanded with the Peacock spinoff Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin, which has been renewed for a second season.