The Office star says he was abused as a child in 'loveless shell' of a home
Rainn Wilson might have made millions laugh as Dwight Schrute on The Office US, but the actor had been suffering from a lifelong mental torment while on the show and beyond.
The 57-year-old actor appeared on Steven Bartlett's The Diary of A CEO podcast recently and opened up about the abuse and trauma he faced as a child. "I experienced a lot of pain in my life and a lot of suffering with anxiety and depression and addiction," he explained. "As I dove into recovery and the therapeutic process, I can pin that squarely on a lot of gross imbalances and trauma that I suffered as a child."
The star also revealed he was in therapy for over 22 years to learn to undo the trauma that has haunted him for so long. "It’s important to excavate and honour the pain we went through, the lies that we were told, the gaslighting that we might have undergone, religious trauma as well, all kinds of different traumas that we suffer," he added.
The actor opened up on a podcast about his childhood (The Diary Of A CEO/youtube)Rainn told the podcast host that his mother "took off" before he was two years old and left him with his father and eventually his stepmother as well. The actor said his father made an impulsive move and took him to "the jungles of Nicaragua when I was three years old," as he said. Rainn eventually settled in Washinton just as he started kindergarten.
When his father remarried, Rainn said he was raised in a "loveless shell of a house" and encountered "lots of different kinds of abuse" full of rage and "gaslighting." The Meg actor said his home life pushed him into acting and comedy. "There’s a reason why so many comedians come from painful backgrounds because comedy is what you plug in to shift your perspective away from pain and trauma just like gratitude takes you away from depression," he explained.
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He was a main character on The Office (BWP Media)
Rainn played Dwight for over nine seasons on The Office US from 2005 to 2013 (BWP Media)"Abandoned toddler, that’ll f**k you up, and there was this weird gaslighting mind f**k," he added. The actor said his father had a traumatic childhood, so it was hard for him to parent Rainn how he needed him to. Rainn became numb to his emotions as a teenager, claiming his stepmother and father couldn't navigate their feelings so they couldn't teach him how to.
In a way, Rainn explained he was "grateful" for his childhood. "I don’t know what my career would have been," he said, "It certainly wouldn’t have been a successful actor."
Rainn played Dwight for over nine seasons on The Office US from 2005 to 2013. Dwight started the series as the assistant to the regional manager at the Dunder Mifflin paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The show was adapted from the UK version created by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais.
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