Last Monday, Pitch Perfect 2 actress Rebel Wilson took to Twitter after what she called the “shady Australian press” claimed she was not 29, but 36. Oh, and that her name wasn’t really Rebel Wilson.
“Okay but all jokes aside now,” the actress wrote, “my real name is Fat Patricia x.”
But, it turned out, the claims were pretty much accurate. Citing public records, the Sydney Morning Herald confirmed a report that originated with Australia’s Women’s Day that Wilson, who had been thought to be 29, was actually a 35-year-old named Melanie Elizabeth Bownds.
“I studied with Rebel at Tara Anglican School for Girls in North Parramatta, Sydney,” an unnamed source told Women’s Day. “But no one knew of a Rebel Wilson. Her name is — or was — Melanie Elizabeth Bownds, and she’s 36 — she was born in 1979 and we left school in 1997.”
This was, it seems, a bit of an open secret.
“Every time that we’ve mentioned Rebel Wilson we’ve had lots of comments from people who went to school or college with her,” Mia Freedman, the publisher and content director of the Mamamia Women’s Network, which published a similar article about Wilson, told the Herald. “They’re usually quite irate with the fact that she’s not 29.”
The pseudonym wasn’t a big deal. Archibald Alexander Leach preferred to be called “Cary Grant” and John Simon Ritchie preferred to be called “Sid Vicious.”
But Wilson passing as a 20-something when she was really a 30-something? This rankled.
“We kind of let it go because we didn’t want to be seen to be attacking her,” Freedman said. “What changed is some comments that she started making recently that have been very negative towards women that are her age or older. Just very subtle barbs.”
Among Wilson’s transgressions: She allegedly slighted the “older” cast of the upcoming all-female Ghostbusters flick.
“They went with, kind of like, an older group,” she told the Independent. The cast includes: Kristen Wiig (41), Rose Byrne (35), Kate McKinnon (31), Melissa McCarthy (44) and Leslie Jones (47).
Wilson has also criticised cinematic tricks used to make actresses look younger, and even called out a Best Actress Oscar winner.
“A lot of actresses here have [digital correcting] written into their contracts,” she told the Guardian. “It’s pretty obvious which ones ... I mean, Sandra Bullock. Did you see ‘Gravity’?”
But Wilson’s age-fudging also seemed downright uncharacteristic — from someone allegedly not self-conscious about their status or appearance, a sour Sunset Boulevard/Norma Desmond note.
“I just always did my own thing and I think stayed true to myself,” Wilson told the Independent of her adolescence. “I didn’t try to change myself or pretend to be anyone different.”
What gives? Wilson, who wasn’t immediately available for comment, found defenders who said Hollywood was to blame.
“So why did Rebel, whose appeal in large part is built on being a straight-talking, unpretentious, body-positive ‘bogan’” that’s Australian slang for, more or less, “low-class” — “feel the need to lie?” Mamamia asked. “One word: Hollywood. Women in Hollywood know that age is a commodity and often, in order to extend their acting lives, a little deception is necessary to nail it in a business obsessed with appearance.”
