Rebel Wilson: The Truth About Sacha Baron Cohen! Trauma Was The Reason I Couldn't Lose Weight!

It was the worst professional experience of my career. And this was before the Me Too movement. I felt humiliated and degraded.

What can you say about that experience?

(exhales)

Rebel Wilson, an award-winning Hollywood superstar.

Okay, here we go. My dad would say horrible things to my mum. "Fat, lazy cow. No one will ever love you." And I had issues with food 'cause I had low self-worth, and that's why I would trash my body. I felt my life wasn't gonna be anything. But then, I found motivational tapes that said- The brave put down their fears and go forward. And so I decided to go out into the world and make a name for myself. And then I noticed on stage that people like laughing at bigger people. I thought, "I could use this to my advantage." I gained all this weight. My body was, like, at 102 kilos. And then I came to America, and now I'm making millions of dollars from playing the fat, funny girl. I'm living this amazing life. But you achieve it, and then it's not enough. And I was still a virgin. I'd never dated properly. And this biological clock, you could hear it going, "Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick." I went to the fertility doctor, and the doctor looks me up and down and goes, "You're not healthy." And then, like, it really sunk in, "I've gotta fix this." But as soon as I started telling people in my team, they're like, "Oh, no, no, no. Why would you wanna lose weight? 'Cause then you'd lose your multi-million dollar career. You just gonna throw it away?"

Was that your hardest moment?

No. The darkest point in my life was when I was 13 and...

Congratulations, Diary of a CEO gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you, and enjoy this episode. Rebel, I, I think to understand somebody, you have to understand their earliest context. And as I read through your book, Rebel Rising, which is out now, I was surprised in many ways. But also, the person that I'd seen on a screen made sense in a bunch of different ways. So, let me throw that question to you as the first question, which is, if I, if I was to endeavor to understand you, what do I need to know about your earliest context?

Yeah, I guess some people see you on screen, and they have this image of what you were like. Um, and often, I guess people would think some overly confident, uh, very confident in her sexuality and, uh, you know, just a kind of brash, ballsy person. But, uh, from my upbringing, uh, I mean, I think I couldn't be more the opposite. I mean, I grew up in a pretty regular suburban Australian upbringing, but was extremely shy to the point where, like, you'd never think that I would choose entertainment for a career. Like, that would just be unimaginable, uh, for this ex- like bordering on some kind of social disorder shyness. And, and then coming from quite a humble beginning of being in a family where we made money selling pet products out of a yellow caravan at dog shows. And so driving around the country to these dog shows and selling, like, pooper scoopers to pick up the poop for the dogs, and, uh, brushes and leads for the dogs, and, and all these things. And so it wasn't... Also, I was allergic to dogs, so that's why-