Rainn Wilson, who played fan favorite Dwight Schrute on the hit sitcom “The Office,” is revealing his childhood struggles and their long-lasting effects.
“I experienced a lot of pain in my life and a lot of suffering with anxiety and depression and addiction,” Wilson, 57, admitted during an appearance this week on the “Diary of a CEO” podcast.
“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,” he continued.
The “Juno” star claims his mom left him when he was around 2, and he was raised in the Baha’i faith with his dad. They moved to the jungle of Nicaragua when he was 3.
His father, an abstract painter and science fiction writer, moved the family to Washington state shortly before kindergarten began — and eventually remarried.
Wilson explained that he would feel confused at Baha’i faith meetings, where he learned a different message than what he was experiencing at home.
His father was in a “loveless” marriage, Wilson alleged, and he and his stepmother would “rage” behind closed doors.
“There was never any kind of, acknowledging what had just happened, so for an 8-year-old, 9-year-old, 10-year-old being in that milieu, you’re like, is this how people act?” he said.
“Is this how we’re supposed to act, we have all these emotions, but we don’t talk about them, and then we go and we pray together?”
He admitted that this “alienated” him from his faith in his 20s, and he began going through a spiritual and mental health crisis.
Ultimately, it led him on a path of discovery.
“That’s when I decided to kind of re-examine these ideas as a potential way out, as a potential path forward for my own transformation, for my personal healing, and I was ultimately able to come back to the religion of my youth and find great peace and solace and meaning in it after a long journey in my 20s and early 30s,” he said.
Wilson said he’s “grateful” for all that he has been through in his life, as he’s unsure if he would have pursued acting if it wasn’t for these tough experiences.
Wilson was cast on NBC’s “The Office” in 2005, alongside Jenna Fischer, Steve Carell and Mindy Kaling. The sitcom’s finale aired in 2013.
He played Dwight, a hilarious salesman and assistant to the regional manager at the fictional paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin — but it was a time when he was “unhappy,” he recently admitted.
On this week’s podcast episode, he said he was “deeply gratified” by the number of people who love the show and those who worked so hard on it behind the scenes.
“These confluences of pain and difficulty and abuse and neglect, they caused me a lot of suffering later on, but at the same time, they caused me to be driven, to try and be the best version of myself,” he reasoned.
“They set me on a spiritual path to really deeply explore the word’s spiritual traditions and try and connect with my higher power and go on a journey of self-discovery, and to take what I’ve learned and share it with others, and they gave me funny.”
The Post reached out to representatives for Wilson for comment.
