The actress ended up playing Kristen Wiig's roommate, Brynn, in the 2011 comedy.
Turns out, Brynn and her Mexican drinking worm tattoo were never supposed to be in Bridesmaids! Australian actress Rebel Wilson opened up about the role that was created for her in the 2011 comedy, which was her first breakout role in America.
"My character wasn't supposed to exist in the movie. I'd auditioned for Melissa McCarthy's character and was the second choice for that role," Wilson said of McCarthy's character, Megan, while on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show. "I guess they liked my audition and added me into the film, essentially, so there was never supposed to be two roommates, only one. So I just kind of added myself in in a way to the scenes."
Wilson, 41, made a name for herself by playing the wacky Brynn, the sister of Matt Lucas' character, Gil. They were the roommates of protagonist Annie (Kristen Wiig).
Wiig, who co-wrote the script for the Oscar-nominated film, gave Wilson some freedom to improvise some of her iconic scenes.
"She was the biggest comedy star in America at that point, but she literally said, 'Whatever you want to do, just go for it. I don't care. If you think it's funny and want to try it, just go for it,'" Wilson said of Wiig. "And I think that nice, collaborative energy, which she must have done to everybody on the set, from her and from Paul [Feig] as a director, meant they just got the most hilarious, spontaneous things. It was pretty much all improvised, all that stuff."
One big change came from Brynn's "Mexican drinking worm" tattoo.
"That tattoo originally was supposed to be hip-hop Garfield and then on the day, they go, we cannot get the rights to hip-hop Garfield," Wilson recalled. "And I'd worked out all these jokes to do about it and then we had to go with the Mexican drinking worm."
The tattoo proved challenging for Wilson's hygiene as she tried to keep it from rubbing off.
"I only filmed Bridesmaids for one week, and for the whole week I had to wrap myself in cling wrap around the torso area so that I could have that tattoo in case I wanted to refer to it," she noted. "We only used it on the first day, but just in case. So I didn't really shower properly that whole week of Bridesmaids."
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