- Rebel Wilson said in her memoir that her paycheck rose from $3,500 to $10 million in six years.
- In "Rebel Rising," breaks down her pay increase from 2011's "Bridesmaids" to 2017's "Pitch Perfect 3."
Rebel Wilson said she went from earning $3,500 for a small role in "Bridesmaids" to making $10 million for a lead role in "Pitch Perfect 3" six years later.
In "Rebel Rising," her new memoir out now in the US, Wilson broke down the behind-the-scenes pay negotiations she made for her breakthrough movies, "Bridesmaids" and "Pitch Perfect."
Wilson, who started her career in her native Australia, wrote that she moved to the US in 2010 to prove she could make it in Hollywood. Soon after she arrived, she signed with the William Morris Endeavor talent agency and booked her first role in the 2011 movie, "Bridesmaids."
Wilson told "The Jess Cagle Show" in 2021 that she initially auditioned for a leading character, Megan, but the director, Paul Feig, created a new role for her after she lost out to Melissa McCarthy.
"I guess they liked my audition that they added me into the film essentially," Wilson said.
Wilson ended up playing Brynn, the main character's roommate. Wilson wrote that she wasn't paid much for the role but didn't care.
"I got paid $3,500 for 'Bridesmaids,' a fee that I then had to pay directly to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) to join the union," Wilson wrote. "So really, I got paid nothing. That didn't matter to me. The experience was everything!"
Wilson wrote that she was low on cash before "Bridesmaids" was released because moving to Hollywood was expensive. But once the movie came out, it "changed the trajectory of my whole career."
The female-led comedy was a critical and commercial success, earning two Oscar nominations and $302 million at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
"Turns out it's a huge hit, and turns out my four scenes are enough to get me noticed! Better than noticed! I am deemed a 'BREAKTHROUGH,'" Wilson wrote.
2012 was a great year for Rebel Wilson
Wilson wrote that the success of "Bridesmaids" helped her book six more movies in the two weeks after its premiere.
Although Wilson singles out "Pitch Perfect" in the book, her most popular movie, she appeared in five other films in 2012: "Bachelorette," "What to Expect When You're Expecting," "Struck by Lightning," "Small Apartments," and "Ice Age: Continental Drift."
In 2017, The Sydney Morning Herald reported citing a court document involving the "Pitch Perfect" star, that Wilson earned a total of $152,000 upfront for those six movies, and she received a bonus of $230,000 over the three years after the films came out.
On Sunday, Wilson told The Sunday Times that she deliberately made herself less attractive because she thought it was the only way to succeed.
"I knew I wouldn't be taken seriously like a Cate Blanchett or Nicole Kidman, but I quickly realized that the bigger you were, the more audiences laughed," she said. "It was a really conscious decision to look ugly. It was part of my plan."
After 2012, Wilson was a recognizable star in the US and continued to appear in blockbuster comedies such as "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb" and "Grimsby."
But her main success came from the "Pitch Perfect" franchise, which made $588 million across three movies, according to Box Office Mojo.
Wilson said the success of 'Pitch Perfect' helped her negotiate higher paychecks
Wilson wrote that she auditioned for "Pitch Perfect" after the screenwriter Kay Cannon reached out via Facebook and told her that she would be perfect for Fat Amy, the main character's eccentric best friend.
"She was right. I was insanely perfect. And I wasn't offended by the character's name at all," Wilson wrote.
Fat Amy quickly became a fan favorite after the film premiered in 2012.
Wilson wrote that she was paid $65,000 for the first movie, but this jumped to $10 million by the third.
Wilson said that the producers initially planned to cut the older actors, including her, and replace them with a younger cast led by Hailee Steinfeld, who joined the series in "Pitch Perfect 2." But this plan backfired when "Pitch Perfect 2" became a major success, earning $287 million at the global box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
"Since the studio didn't think they needed us and deemed us too 'old,' they never signed up any of us for a third-picture deal like they did with some of the newer cast members," Wilson wrote. "When 'Pitch 2' became the highest-grossing musical comedy film of ALL TIME, we totally had the leverage."
According to Wilson, a market research group poll for Universal Pictures found that audiences most wanted to see Wilson in the third movie. Wilson wrote that she used this information to get the highest paycheck of the cast, although she initially offered to negotiate as a group.
"The day I signed that ten-million-dollar deal, I thought of all the hard work I had put into my career every day since I got out of the hospital after I recovered from malaria," Wilson wrote, referring to when she caught the disease while living in South Africa. "Although the fame had come at thirty-two, now, at thirty-seven, I had the full financial reward."
Representatives of the producers of "Pitch Perfect 3" did not respond to a comment request from Business Insider.