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How Rebel Wilson Channeled Her Inner Britney Spears for Netflix's Senior Year

By Paige Strout May 11, 2022 5:54 PMTags

Rebel Wilson's dance moves drive us crazy.

The actress, 42, is headed back to high school in the new Netflix movie Senior Year. The movie—which jumps from 2002 to 2022—allowed Wilson to tap into her inner pop star for one of the movie's most memorable scenes.

"We got to recreate Britney Spears' 'Crazy' video, and I just tried to channel Britney," Wilson told E! News' Daily Pop's Francesca Amiker at the film's red carpet premiere. "I was just like, ‘Okay, what would Britney be feeling in 2002?' and like how she dances and how she moves."

When it comes to her own high school experience, Wilson revealed her senior year was nothing like a music video.

"My senior year, I was in a Christian, all-girls boarding school in Sydney, Australia," she said. "I was very studious, but we had like 18th birthday parties every weekend. So, every Saturday night was like a huge party. But the rest of the time, I was [a] pretty studious and pretty disciplined young lady."

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Rebel Wilson's Best Looks

As for what yearbook superlative Wilson thinks she would win now? She joked, "I mean, I've become the most successful girl ever, I think, from my high school."

Going back to high school for Senior Year taught Wilson's co-star Justin Hartley, 45, a lesson in acting.

Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

"I need to take one more class or one more sort of step back and figure out how I can break less in a scene when I'm cracking up," Hartley told E! News. "These people are so funny."

Long before he was starring on This Is Us, Hartley was just another "awkward" teen like the rest of us. And while the new movie is full of laughs, the actor gave fans a tease of what will go down during This Is Us' emotional May 24 series finale on NBC.

"It's a show that deals with really heavy issues and a lot of heartache and heartbreak and things like that, and triumph, as well. And I think our last episode, it's not so sad as it is uplifting," he shared. "And our writers did such a great job of tying this six-year series up, and not in a pretty little bow where it's like, ‘Oh, we did it on purpose,' but in a way that you can tell that the story is not about what's happening right now as much as it is about what's gonna happen to them, where are they going, what the future is."

Senior Year premieres Friday, May 13 on Netflix.