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.”
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). According to Wilson, the film is not unlike those of her co-star, Leslie Mann’s husband, Judd Apatow, who directed Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and 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.
There was also a bit of blood on set, according to Wilson, who says that the physical comedy got a bit full-on. “I’m sitting here with bruises on my arms,” she laughs. “You do get a bit banged up. There’s a bit where we pull Leslie out of a taxi, which was not actually part of the scene; it was meant to be just us getting out of a taxi, and then we just improvised the part where we lift Leslie out of the taxi’s window. It was wet too…we just put our bodies on the line. You don’t really get that hurt though. Jumping onto that taxi was pretty fun. One of the things I did was roll off the taxi, and my leg got stuck in the license plate, and got all bloodied. Also, Leslie just very accidentally kicked me in the face in one scene. We were just in the moment, so it doesn’t hurt in the moment, but then afterwards…. that’s one of the funny bits though. It was full contact.”
Finally, the conversation returns to the themes of the film, and its central it’s-okay-to-be-single thesis. “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 released in cinemas on February 18.
