Rebel Wilson Lands Two Great Roles In First Week Of 2014
Scoring her second great role of the new year, Rebel Wilson will play the sharp-tongued roommate of Amanda Seyfried’s character in the Jake Szymanski-directed He’s F-ing Perfect, based on the script by Lauryn Kahn that will be produced by Gary Sanchez. Seyfried will play a social media-savvy girl who is pessimistic about love and vets her friends’ dates to find flaws. When that process leads her to uncover the perfect guy, she decides to use her Internet research skills to turn herself into his perfect match. Wilson landed a part that a lot of actresses chased, and it comes after Wilson landed a showy role as the night guard at a London museum that is the setting for the Shawl Levy-directed Night At The Museum 3.
It is nice to see Wilson flourish by being herself after winning turns in the films Bachelorette and especially the sleeper hit Pitch Perfect. You’d like to think that Hollywood can create role models of all shapes and sizes for young women, but it is difficult. I felt badly for Melissa McCarthy when Rex Reed made nasty reference to her weight in Identity Thief, because she is undoubtedly the most gifted physical comedienne working today. There has been a lot of back and forth about the reception given to actresses who are not anorexic supermodels, and it most recently flared up when Lena Dunham, Judd Apatow and others on the show took offense at TCA to a question of why the show creator/star was nude so often onscreen. I don’t think the questioner, Wrap’s Tim Molloy, was trying to do more than prod a discussion, but let’s face it, that’s likely not a question he would ask Margot Robbie at the junket for The Wolf Of Wall Street. Apatow was right to respond with a person critique because it was the equivalent of asking a woman how much she weighs. It takes incredible courage for Dunham to put vanity aside and bare herself as freely as she does. I can’t think of another young actress that brave. I am not a big fan of the show, either; I found early episodes to be demeaning to women and as a father of daughters it troubled me (though it is my oldest daughter’s favorite show and my distaste is obviously generational and proof I am fossilizing).
As for He’s F-ing Perfect, this comedy has shaped up nicely since it was bought by Fox 2000 in a $1 million-against-$1.5 million deal, at a time when Emma Stone was being eyed. The project stalled there, but Universal picked it up and gave it second life. Kahn is Adam McKay’s former assistant, and Szymanski got the job after helming some of the best comic spots for Gary Sanchez’s website Funny Or Die. The film will be produced by Gary Sanchez’s McKay and Will Ferrell and Kevin Messick with Good Universe also producing.
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