Rebel Wilson Once Got a Concussion — Then Worked a 16-Hour Day: 'I Should Have Rested'

Concussion Awareness Now

Rebel Wilson doesn't have an exciting narrative to describe the concussion she got five years ago.

"I'd love to tell you some awesome story where I was doing some cool stunt, but how it happened, it was kind of embarrassing," she tells PEOPLE.

Her injury occurred in 2017 while she was working on the film Isn't It Romantic in New York City. "It was just this little grass hill, and it got a bit slippery with morning dew," recalls Wilson, 42. "Everyone's walking down to the set and I said, 'Careful, guys' and literally a second after, I slipped, both my feet went out from under me. I fell backwards and hit my head on the grass. I lost consciousness for a couple seconds. Then sat up and thought, 'Oh my God, what happened?' "

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An ambulance brought her to the hospital and she remembers thinking, Oh God, I don't want it to be a fuss. A brain scan detected that she'd suffered a concussion. "The thing about brain injuries is you can't really see it," recalls Wilson. "And so the producers said, 'Do you want to go back to work?' And then I did a 16-hour day." After a few days of intense headaches, nausea and some neck and shoulder pains, she recovered.

Five years later, she's teamed up with the Brain Injury Association of America, which is partnering with Abbott, as the spokesperson for Concussion Awareness Now, a new coalition that aims to change how society views concussion.

Concussion Awareness Now

"In hindsight, and from what I know from doing this campaign, I should never have felt that pressure to go back to work," says the Pitch Perfect actress, who's also a new mom to daughter Royce, born via surrogate. "I should have rested. If you sprain your ankle and you can't really walk, you'd get it checked out and rest it. But with a brain injury, it's so tricky because people don't think about it in the same way."

"Why wouldn't you for your brain?" she asks. "That is the most important part of me. Why wouldn't you treat it with the kind of level of respect and get it looked at?"

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Brain injury is also the subject of her upcoming film, The Almond and the Seahorse, which features Wilson in her first dramatic role. "The story deals with traumatic brain injury and all the things are kind of interconnected," she says. "And I just want to encourage people that if they hit their head, to get it checked out medically."

"Most people just tough it out," she says. "And so I think it's important to get the message out. When I slipped on a grass hill, [I thought]  'Oh, I should just brush myself off and get better.' I could have had a serious brain bleed. If I'd never been to the hospital, I wouldn't have known that. So it was really important to get medical help. What I know now is if you have a concussion, you should rest."

And as a new mom, she jokes,"You need all your brain power, don't you, being a mother. I've got this international career and this most gorgeous baby who I want to spend as much time with as humanly possible. And I love to just cuddle her. I mean, I'm obsessed with her already. She's just the cutest. But God, you need to be getting your sleep and you need to have all your brain power."