Rebel Wilson’s memoir, Rebel Rising, is now on sale in the U.S., and it’s making a lot of headlines. Last month, in addition to announcing that she devoted a chapter to alleged harassment by “massive asshole” Sacha Baron Cohen, she told People that the book would discuss her experience of having sex for the first time at 35. “Not everybody has to lose their virginity as a teenager … people can wait till they’re ready or wait till they’re a bit more mature,” she said. “And I think that could be a positive message. You obviously don’t have to wait until you’re in your 30s like me, but you shouldn’t feel pressure as a young person.”
She said that as a teenager she actively avoided the topic of sex out of embarrassment and that later in life she lied to a friend “just to avoid the questions” by saying she’d had sex at 23 to “get it over with.” Wilson continued to avoid the topic as she got older and even said she would leave the room when it came up.
Wilson’s first public relationship began in 2015, when she dated actor and producer Mickey Gooch Jr. for a few months. In the book, she confirms that Gooch was the first person she had sex with, writing, “Micks, I know this might be news to you if you are reading this, but yes I lost my virginity to you.” (She confirmed to the New York Times that her ex has read the book.) She also wrote that her decision to have sex with him was influenced by her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis, explaining, “Life IS short. I didn’t want to live my life without experiencing sex. Experiencing love. I put it out into the universe that I was finally ready. I was going to feel the fear and just do it.”
Wilson and Gooch split later in 2015. The actress was romantically linked to men until 2022, when she confirmed her relationship with Ramona Agruma in an Instagram post captioned, “I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince … but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess.” Last year, Wilson launched a dating app called Fluid and told People the term felt like the most accurate way to define her own sexuality. “I know that, to me, it doesn’t matter about the gender, it just matters about the person,” she said. “I never thought I was 100 percent straight. I don’t quite know how to define my sexuality, but I do know there’s a lot of people out there that don’t want to totally define it either.”
Although she first had sex at 35, Wilson writes that she didn’t have her first orgasm until she was 39 — and she experienced it solo. In 2019, which she calls in the book her “Year of Love,” the actress says she went on around 50 dates, two of which resulted in sex but none of which gave her an orgasm. Instead, some educational podcasts and newly purchased sex toys did. “When I’d had sex over the past few years, I’d never really thought about my pleasure. It was more about the guy climaxing, and then pretty quickly sex was over. And while I had experienced pleasure, I don’t think at this point I’d truly had an orgasm,” she wrote. “I truly experienced an orgasm for the first time at 39 just by myself.”
Discussing what she called her “late bloomer” experience, she referenced that journey, telling People, “If I had been born 20 years later, I probably would’ve explored my sexuality more. I just knew I was attracted to men, and that was the normal thing.” She said she started opening up, both in dating and in her ideas about marriage, after her father’s death during the production of her 2014 show Super Fun Night. She said she had feelings for women “only years later,” explaining, “I just think it’s a sign of where society kind of was.”
This post has been updated.