Rebel Wilson reveals the Cats cast 'had to lick each other' while filming

The hotly-anticipated film will finally be out next weekend 
Rebel Wilson and Jason Derulo on The Jonathan Ross Show
Rex Features
Rachel McGrath13 December 2019

Rebel Wilson has made an unexpected admission about the upcoming film Cats, revealing that the cast had to lick each other during filming.

The movie musical – which baffled fans when the trailer first aired – features an all-star cast including Wilson, Taylor Swift, James Corden, Dame Judi Dench, Idris Elba and Jason Derulo.

While filming for this Saturday's Jonathan Ross Show, Wilson, 39, explained: “We had to lick each other a little bit.

“I have actually got a photo of me licking Jason. He didn’t mind.”

Cats, The Musical: Film 2019 - In pictures

1/13

US star Derulo, who is also on the sofa this weekend, joked: “I don’t know if it made the film. I remember doing that over and over, all day long and then it didn’t make the film.”

The pair added that they had a “cat teacher” to make them aware “that you have a tail and ears on top of your head.”

Australian actress Wilson also said the cast tried but failed to add rude jokes to the film.

Cats Trailer

“Billions of people around the world have seen the musical because it’s so iconic but there’s not a lot of comedy, there’s actually no jokes, dialogue jokes, so we thought, ‘Let’s add some!,’” she said.

“The editors sent me a list of all the jokes that got cut out because they were way too rude.”

The Cats trailer brought the internet to a standstill when it was released earlier this year.

Rebel and her Cats alter-ego

Unfortunately, many fans were baffled by the clip and questioned the scale of the cats and the quality of the CGI fur.

Lead star Francesca Hayward later defended the movie, telling Standard Online: “If they [the critics] had been on the sets themselves, [they would've seen] they were absolutely extraordinary. It was like a playground for us.

"We really did feel cat-sized compared to everything we were seeing and everything that was around us.”

Katherine Ryan, Jofra Archer and Penn Jillette also appear on The Jonathan Ross Show.

The Jonathan Ross Show airs on Saturday at 10.10pm on ITV.

Additional reporting by Press Association.