The rise of actor Rainn Wilson to prominence should provide some comfort to awkward adolescents everywhere. Wilson was a bassoonist, Dungeon-and-Dragons playing nerdy kid in Seattle before being nerdy was cool.
A move to the Chicago area in high school allowed him to break out of his earlier mold and pursue theater ( though he kept up with the bassoon). While it didn’t happen overnight, Wilson connected with acting, and with comedy, and the most visible result was his character, the intense Dwight Schrute, on the long-running NBC comedy, “The Office.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiCWFtlynA8
But Wilson’s new memoir,The Bassoon King, goes into deeper territory than many celebrity memoirs, detailing the spiritual seeking that led him to start the venture Soulpancake, which brings people together around life’s biggest questions.
Just days after its release, The Bassoon King is an Amazon number one top seller in a category you may not have expected - religious humor.
Wilson was raised in the Bahá’í faith, but says he strayed away from religion as he pursued what he saw as a more bohemian lifestyle in early adulthood. Although as an adult Wilson found his way back to his faith, he also understood that he needed a balanced approach when writing about the topic in his memoir.
"People hear the word 'religion' or 'faith' and a lot of people recoil. And I have to always just remind myself to be compassionate for that because it's true, that stuff is really tricky," says Wilson. "Often times people try and convert you, or try and make you feel bad for what you believe or don't believe. There's an enormous amount of hypocrisy that's done in the name of faith and the name of religion that really gives it a bad name, and it's confusing. So I try and be understanding about that."
Wilson left the Bahá’í faith behind when he moved to New York City to become a trained actor, initially believing that faith and art were not connected and could not coexist. Building upon his career and personal life, Wilson achieved many goals he set out to do, but found that something was still missing and keeping him from true happiness. After returning to his faith Wilson realized that art and devotion are one in the same.
"We’re creating things of beauty," he explains. "Hopefully art makes people laugh, it uplifts their souls, and their hearts. It makes the world a more beautiful and rich and vibrant place, telling stories that we relate to. All of these are spiritual acts."
While his personal religious journey was "so hard" to write for audiences, Wilson found that writing about darker times in his life such as family, the difficult birth of his son, and drug and alcohol issues were not as hard to revisit. "I guess I've been in enough therapy, so I'm kind of at peace with them all," he jokes.
Growing professionally was also a difficult journey for Wilson. While living in New York he wanted to uphold the acting he was trained in and didn't necessarily connect with the roles he played. After a particularly awful performance on Broadway, Wilson was determined to make his acting more meaningful.
"I can't be everything to everyone in this classical, ideal model of an actor," he says. "I have to be me, I have to be quirky and off-beat and an outsider. This is who I am, so I started just bringing way more of myself to roles."
Wilson reflects that had he not bombed on Broadway and "gone through hell," he would not have ended up playing Dwight in "The Office."
"So many of our greatest failures and struggles, trials, and tests are preparing us for much greater things," says Wilson.
Rainn Wilson is best known for his role as Dwight Schrute on the NBC series, “The Office.” He also co-founded the website and media venture, Soulpancake, and the author of the new memoir, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy. He was in Milwaukee Thursday night for a Boswell Book Company event at the Pabst Theater.
