By Gill Pringle
“My character, Robin, is a single lady living it up in New York City,” says Rebel Wilson of her alter ego in the comedy, How To Be Single. “She is fiercely independent, and she might also be a raging alcoholic as well. That isn’t explored in depth though, but it might be in the deleted scenes on the DVD. But Robin is just really independent, and she knows the singles scene in New York pretty good.” In short, the character of Robin is right in Rebel Wilson’s wheelhouse. After cracking up Australian audiences for years on TV series like Pizza, The Wedge, and Bogan Pride, the Sydney-born stand-up comic turned actress quietly took her act to Hollywood. Noticed by the right people, she stole her few scenes in the comedy smash, Bridesmaids, and then went on to appear in Bachelorette, What To Expect When You’re Expecting, and Ice Age: Continental Drift, before finally knocking it out of the park with the sleeper hit, Pitch Perfect, in 2012. As the self-dubbed “Fat Amy”, Wilson owned the musical comedy, and backed up just as effectively for the even more successful 2015 sequel. A wild, rowdy screen presence, Rebel Wilson is one of many funny women – including the likes of Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Kristen Wiig – bringing the big time laughs in Hollywood. And while a foray into TV with the short lived sitcom, Super Fun Night, proved unsuccessful, Wilson’s star remains undimmed.
In How To Be Single, Wilson is once again the comic wild card. Her anarchic, grab-the-bull-by-the-horns (so to speak) approach to the titular dilemma is sharply juxtaposed against that of the film’s other principal characters: Alison Brie’s hyper-intelligent, desperate-to-be-married Lucy; Leslie Mann’s maternal-clock-ticking obstetrician; and Dakota Johnson’s innocent Lucy, who gets schooled on the dating scene by Wilson’s Robin after she exits a long term relationship. Despite its raw and raunchy tone, the themes of the film clicked with Rebel Wilson. “My sister, Liberty, is married and has been in a long term relationship since she was fifteen,” she says. “I was always the opposite, and I think that if you’re single, you can go after your dreams more, and achieve more. The message that comes through in the film is that you should do what you want to do, and that it’s alright to be single. You shouldn’t feel a need to be partnered with someone to be complete. That’s a good message. And that’s something that I’ve always thought, even when it wasn’t a very popular concept. That idea is becoming more popular now, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t the popular thing to do. It’s a hopeful message for all the single people out there.”
When FilmInk chats to Wilson, she’s happily surrounded by her How To Be Single co-stars, whose energy zings across the walls of the interview room. “We all slept in the same bed every night,” Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades Of Grey, A Bigger Splash) laughs of their bonding experiences through the shoot. “When I do Pitch Perfect, that’s what we do as well,” Wilson jokes. “No…we were working so much.” Like Wilson, all of the film’s cast members are on board with the themes of How To Be Single. “With all of the characters, you ultimately see that it’s really about servicing yourself before you let someone else into your world,” offers Alison Brie (Community, Mad Men). “All four women learn about what they want, and that opens them up to being in a relationship, or not being in a relationship, and celebrating being single. It’s just about being happy with yourself, and doing what you want to do for yourself first. People are staying single longer, and settling down later, which is more generally accepted now. That said, people do deal with that stigma of being single. If you’ve ever been a single person at a wedding, you know that feeling. My parents aren’t very old-fashioned, but as soon as my sister had her first child, they were asking me when I was getting married…so that attitude still exists.”
Throughout this loose, scattershot group interview, a rolling swathe of topics are broached, as the four co-stars bounce off each other, and swirl from subject to subject with raunchy, freewheeling abandon: they chat noisily about the bottles of Evian on the table in the interview room (“We’ve got the fancy stuff,” Wilson coos. “They’ve spared no expense”); the prevalence of online dating sites (“My brother has that thing called RAYA,” says Dakota Johnson. “It’s really exclusive. My brother was one of the people that started it, and I have no idea how it works. I refuse to be a part of it”); the film’s producer, Drew Barrymore (“We didn’t meet her personally, but she sent us gifts,” says Wilson. “It was that kind of relationship,” adds Brie); Dakota Johnson’s new haircut (“It’s cute,” they all concur); shooting in New York City (“One night, a couple was having sex near our trailers,” reveals Brie. “We didn’t see it, but people working on the movie were like, ‘Don’t go back to your trailers just yet; we’re going to let them finish’”); baseball players (“They wear those tight pants, and they have the best butts,” enthuses Leslie Mann. “They’re big and muscly. They’re beautiful”); and their co-star, Jake Bracey (“He was adorable,” says Mann. “He seems so white bread, but he’s not at all. He’s covered in tattoos.” Adds Brie: He’s so ghetto”).
Eventually, talk turns to something slightly more serious, like the just passed Valentine’s Day, with the movie opening on that coveted date in the US. Wilson, Brie, and Johnson ask the twenty-years-married Leslie Mann if she and her husband – writer, producer, and director, Judd Apatow (Trainwreck, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, This Is 40) – still celebrate this traditional day of romance. “Yes, we do,” Mann replies. “Although last year, he was out of town, and it pissed me off. I was like, ‘What an asshole! It’s important to be home on Valentine’s Day!’ But he’s very sweet and makes sure to take good care of me on Valentine’s Day and treat me well. He gets me nice gifts, and rubs my feet and stuff like that.” Mann’s co-stars are impressed. “That sounds great,” says Brie. “I don’t think Valentine’s Day is taken so seriously. For me, personally, it’s not like a huge high pressure day, but maybe when I was younger…” Mann: “It’s a holiday… you hope to get a great sweater.” Johnson: “I feel that you’re either super excited to be getting presents – because, let’s be honest, getting presents is the best – or you’re drunk and a little angry.” Wilson: “In which case, come and see this movie because it will cheer you up.”
With its four female leads, source novel by Liz Tuccillo, and backing from the aforementioned Drew Barrymore’s production company, How To Be Single is undeniably a femme-driven affair, but sitting in the director’s chair is 38-year-old German filmmaker, Christian Ditter, whose previous work includes 2014’s Love, Rosie (starring Lily Collins and Sam Claflin) and a handful of German comedies and family flicks (The Crocodiles, French For Beginners). “There was a little bit of improvising, but more than anything, Christian was a grounding force,” Brie says of the director’s style. “We’re all capable of comedy, and he would remind us of the intentions of the characters, and those more grounded things, which comes across in the film.” According to Wilson, the film is not unlike those of Mann’s husband, Judd Apatow, who also produced the female-driven comedy, Bridesmaids, a winning mix of raunchy laughs and genuine emotion. “There’s so much heart in the film,” Wilson says of How To Be Single. “Christian was tracking the emotional through-line, which was really helpful,” says Mann. “The producer, Dana Fox, was more in charge of the comedy stuff.” Adds Brie: “She was also a writer on it, so she was very flexible with the script and letting everyone play with the material a bit.”
Finally, the conversation returns to the themes of the film, and its central it’s-okay-to-be-single thesis. “This movie is celebrating being single,” says Alison Brie. “And because the characters are all so different, and with the guys in the movie also being single, it’s fun to see all the different ways that it can affect people, and the ways that it’s funny. You can see anything in a dramatic or a funny way, and this is our humorous take on it. That’s what I like about the movie: it’s a positive message about being single. Being single is different now than it was years ago, and being in a relationship is also different now than it was years ago. But independence can be confused with single-ness; yes, you are capable of being strong and independent and being in a relationship as well; we’re just showing all sides of what it is to be single or not.” Appropriately, the final word belongs to Aussie star on the rise, Rebel Wilson. “It’s just a sign of how society and culture is changing,” she says. “It’s not seen that a woman is some strange lesbian feminist or something if she just wants to be independent. It’s much more normal for women to get out there and kick arse in whatever they want to do.”
How To Be Single is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
