TIFF 2026 'Girl Group': Jennifer Coolidge calls Rebel Wilson's deadpan comedy delivery the best she's ever seen

Elisabetta BianchiniSat, September 12, 2026 at 10:30 AM UTC

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For anyone who has been inspired by girl groups from the Spice Girls, TLC and Destiny's Child to En Vogue, Blackpink and Girls Aloud, Rebel Wilson’s film Girl Group, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is a love letter to girlhood and girl group fandom. Featuring an all-star cast that includes Wilson, Jennifer Coolidge, Sheridan Smith, Jamie-Lee O'Donnell, Judi Love, Guz Khan and Randall Park, it’s a fun musical comedy, with lots of great dance numbers to enjoy.

If you grew up with girl groups from the 1990s and 2000s specifically, you’ll be particularly excited to see Spice Girls’ Melanie C, All Saints’ Shaznay Lewis, and The Pussycat Dolls members Nicole Scherzinger and Ashley Roberts in the cast. An example of how the film blends nostalgia with newer generation entertainment.

In Girl Group, Wilson plays Tassie, who was discovered alongside her four friends at a school talent show in 1996, forming the group Gurlfriends before Tassie broke out on her own. But when she gets a DUI, Tassie has court-ordered community service to complete, which involves mentoring a group of teenage girls who aspire to be a famous girl group.

While Tassie is bitter that the other Gurlfriends members are replacing her for their reunion tour, she learns about a record label competition to find the next great girl group, and her community service turns into Tassie prepping these teens to win.

Girl Group (TIFF)

“My first motivation was basically, the Spice Girls helped me out when I was in a really dark time as a teenager, and they were like, ‘Girl power! Get out there and do it!’ And that was kind of the time where I came out of my shell as a shy 14-year-old. And those girls gave me the courage to just get out there and be bold and brave,” Wilson said during the Q&A following the film’s screening at Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall. “And I just have always loved girl groups, … even the old school, like The Supremes and The Ronettes, into new school, like Blackpink or Fifth Harmony, TLC, En Vogue. There's so many groups that are just awesome, and often girl group music is underrated.”

“And so I really wanted to celebrate as much as I could, and as you could see, there's like 35 banging songs in the movie, so I tried to represent as much as I could from girl group music from the past 50 years.”

Wilson really represented a lot of great music, specifically music by women, with covers of songs by Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Spice Girls, to name a few, as well as original songs that will quickly get stuck in your head. And it’s all elevated by choreography from a talented team that included Christopher Scott and Kaycee Rice.

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 11: Rebel Wilson attends the premiere of "Girl Group" during the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival at Roy Thomson Hall on September 11, 2026 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)The ‘pressures’ of being a young woman

For the girls that Tassie mentors, played by Lilah Pate, Bailey Stender, Mia Kaplan, Daniela Couso, Chabely Ponce and Ana Yi Puig, there were over a thousand girls who auditioned in the U.S. And for their competing girl group, the Cream Team, there were 350 girls who auditioned in London.

“I am so proud … of the cast. Some of them, they're such a discovery, and I hope everybody sees them and how brilliant they are,” Wilson said. “They're just absolutely insanely talented, and I think this is just the start for them.”

While much of Girl Group is lighthearted and fun, Wilson’s story also carries particularly poignant messages about being a young girl in today’s world.

“There are many pressures on young women that we … seeded into the film. Social media pressures, the pressure to look a certain way, to fit a certain mould,” Wilson said. “Even though it was a big ensemble cast, we tried to give each character something to kind of sink into.”

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“The one great thing about when I showed it to a couple of people when we were developing the edit, the Gen Z crowd … really related to one character or another, and it was very interesting, … they all would pick a different character for different reasons.”

TORONTO, ONTARIO - SEPTEMBER 11: Actor Randall Park, actress Loren Gray, actress Chabely Ponce, actress Lilah Pate, actress Bailey Stender, actress Miracle Washington, actress Rebel Wilson, actress Jennifer Coolidge, actress Mia Kaplan, producer Matt Williams, actress Ana Yi Puig, and actress Daniela Couso attend Girl Group premiere party at RBC House during the Toronto International Film Festival 2026 on September 11, 2026 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Ryan Emberley/Getty Images for RBC)‘Rebel set a real tone to the set, and it was very loving’

With Wilson leading the project as the writer and director, she decided, as a bonding experience for the cast, that they would all go see Lady Gaga perform, which Jennifer Coolidge, who plays Tassie’s manager in Girl Group, described as a “dream night” that she’ll never forget.

And reflecting on what Wilson was like as a director and collaborator, Coolidge applauded Wilson’s work, particularly her comedy skills.

“I think Rebel has the best deadpan comedy delivery of any actress or actor I've ever seen,” Coolidge said. “And I lost some serious points for laughing and wrecking the scene, because you mess it up, and then you hear how much it costs when you mess it up.”

“Sometimes these jobs can be dull, and it's not your fault, … but [Rebel Wilson] made it such a fun ride from beginning to end.”

“There was such an ease to her directing, which is so nice for us actors, and I would think particularly our young actors, who some of them were doing this for the first time,” Randall Park added. “It never felt heavy or stressful. It always felt very light and loose, and Rebel set a real tone to the set, and it was very loving, … and that was really nice.”

“You never felt like anything was a mistake or wrong. It's just like, ‘That's fine. Just do it again.’”

For Wilson, knowing the calibre of comedic talent in the cast meant it would be a “shame” not to make room for improvisation, which she also learned back when she worked on Bridesmaids.

“Even though I had written the script and spent a lot of time on it, I wanted them to play, and that included every single one of the cast members. So everybody got to put in and pitch in,” Wilson said. “I learned that from my first job in America, … Bridesmaids, which was such a great learning experience with Paul Feig and Judd Apatow. I was a junior. That was my first job in America. And they let me improvise whatever on that set, and so I always try to do that, unless we're really running short of time.”

“I really want to get as much out of each scene as we can, and often that's from spontaneous improvisation.”

Girl Group is screening Sept. 12, Sept. 17 and Sept. 19 for TIFF

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”