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 plenty of pain in my life and plenty 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 plenty of gross imbalances and trauma that I suffered as a toddler,” he continued.
The “Juno” star claims his mom left him when he was around 2, and he was raised within the Baha’i faith along with his dad. They moved to the jungle of Nicaragua when he was 3.
His father, an abstract painter and science fiction author, 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 special 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 sort 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 that this how people act?” he said.
“Is that this how we’re alleged to act, now we have all these emotions, but we don’t discuss them, after which 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 made a decision to sort of re-examine these ideas as a possible way out, as a possible path forward for my very own transformation, for my personal healing, and I used to be ultimately in a position to come back to the faith of my youth and find great peace and solace and meaning in it after an extended 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 solid 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 on the fictional paper distribution company Dunder Mifflin — but it surely 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 that love the show and those that worked so hard on it behind the scenes.
“These confluences of pain and difficulty and abuse and neglect, they caused me plenty of suffering afterward, but at the identical time, they caused me to be driven, to try to be one of the best version of myself,” he reasoned.
“They set me on a spiritual path to essentially deeply explore the word’s spiritual traditions and take a look at 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 so they gave me funny.”
The Post reached out to representatives for Wilson for comment.
