Rebel Wilson started the week with surprise news: She secretly became a mother just days ago. Wilson wrote that she welcomed her first child, daughter Royce Lillian, via surrogate. She shared the first photo of her little girl, too.
Wilson wrote:
Beyond proud to announce the birth of my first child, Royce Lillian, born this past week via surrogate 💗 I can’t even describe the love I have for her, she’s a beautiful miracle! I am forever grateful to everyone who has been involved, (you know who you are), this has been years in the making…but particularly wanted to thank my gorgeous surrogate who carried her and birthed her with such grace and care. Thank you for helping me start my own family, it’s an amazing gift. The BEST gift!!
I am ready to give little Roycie all the love imaginable. I am learning quickly…much respect to all the Mums out there! Proud to be in your club. 💗💗💗
Wilson spoke to People in May about how her hope to become a mother someday inspired her to change her lifestyle. She discussed how a fertility doctor in 2019 told her, when she was trying to freeze her eggs, that she’d have better luck with the procedure “if you were healthier.”
“He looked me up and down and said, ‘You’d do much better if you were healthier,’” she recalled. “‘I was taken aback. I thought, Oh God, this guy’s so rude.’ He was right. I was carrying around a lot of excess weight. It’s almost like I didn’t think of my own needs. I thought of a future child’s needs that really inspired me to get healthier.”
“It wasn’t a goal to get to a certain weight,” she added. “It was just being the healthiest version of myself.”
Then, she candidly discussed her hopes of having children: “I would love to have a family. I’m just going for it by myself at the moment because of the biological clock,” she said. “If I meet the right person, great, and then they can fit in with whatever happens. It’s great that the technology exists. You have so many options with surrogacy and sperm donors. I only started thinking of fertility when I was 39 so you feel quite late but then there are women in their mid-40s who’ve been successful. Look at Janet Jackson, it’s pretty inspiring. Any woman who’s gone through it, I really relate to. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster. I don’t know how it’s going to end. But I’m still young enough to try.”
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
