The cast of the upcoming Cats movie have spilled plenty of wild secrets about life on set — from enrolling in “cat school” to using “digital fur technology.” One week before the movie musical hits theaters, Rebel Wilson revealed that things got a little steamy as she prepared to make her appearance at the Jellicle ball.
“I lost eight pounds shooting my number in four days,” Wilson, 39, said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Thursday, December 12. “One, because there’s a lot of physicality … but also, they heated up the set very high, to almost 100 Fahrenheit so that we could never cool down.”
The Pitch Perfect alum plays Jennyanydots, the tap dancing cat, in Tom Hooper‘s screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s iconic Broadway show. Wilson takes the silver screen alongside former New York City Ballet principal, Robbie Fairchild, and British ballerina Francesca Hayward, who apparently had some pretty lofty expectations when it came to staying in the zone on set.
“These people are like, the best dancers in the whole world, so they can’t cool their muscles down or they could get an injury and they’d be out of the film,” the Isn’t It Romantic star said on Thursday. “So they’d heat up the set like a sauna so we would never cool down, but made it pretty uncomfortable.”
Wilson’s personal trainer, Gunnar Peterson, revealed to Us Weekly exclusively in March that the Jojo Rabbit actress has been “crushing” her fitness regimen this year. The rom-com star looked slimmer than ever at a Melbourne event earlier this year, and the celebrity fitness coach said Wilson is totally dedicated to her rigorous training routine.
“Never misses [a workout],” Peterson told Us in March. “Comes in even on travel days and right when she gets back. She is locked in!”
The Bridesmaids star started showing off her weight loss journey in October 2018, and her Los Angeles-based trainer said Wilson would hit the gym “a solid four days a week” whenever she was on the west coast.
Although Wilson values her workouts, she previously revealed in an interview with The Telegraph that she gained weight on purpose in order to stand out early on in her career.
“I don’t know if it was megaconscious, but I thought, ‘How can I get more laughs? Maybe if I was a bit fatter,’” Wilson said in 2016. “And then suddenly I was fatter and doing comedy.”
