Rachel Wolfson: Meet the ‘Jackass’ Crew’s First Female Member

Jackass Forever delivered fans a healthy mixture of familiar comedy and new elements. Now that the movie is out, it’s clear that comedian Rachel Wolfson is one of the most welcome additions to the franchise. As the first female member of the Jackass crew, Wolfson has a lot of questions to answer.

Wolfson is listed in the main cast of Jackass Forever, and she stars in some of its most absurd pranks. She came to the franchise with a considerable following already – Wolfson has over 84,000 Instagram followers, a thriving career in Los Angeles’ stand-up comedy scene and a handful of published articles about cannabis. She began pursuing comedy professionally in 2016, and she told an interviewer from Indie Wire that Johnny Knoxville reached out to her on Instagram and asked her to be a part of Jackass Forever. As a lifelong fan of the franchise, she accepted.

“One day in 2019, I noticed that [Johnny] Knoxville was liking a bunch of my stuff on Instagram, all my jokes, and he was extremely supportive of the content I was pushing out,” she explained. “Not too long after that, I get a direct message from Johnny Knoxville, and I’m like, ‘Is this really happening? Is this a prank?’ And the message was something like, ‘Hey, you want to hop on a phone call with me? I want to talk to you about something.’ I couldn’t believe it. So I get on the phone with him and, sure enough, it’s the real Johnny Knoxville, the voice I had heard for many years, growing up in my living room.”

Wolfson admitted that she was still suspicious that she was the butt of the joke pretty far into the process of auditioning for Jackass – and even of filming it. She stressed that this was a dream come true for someone who grew up watching Jackass religiously. She said that she even defied the show’s warning and mimicked many of the stunts with her friends.

“Jackass was very much a part of my adolescence,” she said. “Everything was a Jackass bit.”

Wolfson spoke at length about the unique position she was in as the first woman in the main cast of Jackass. She said it was nerve-wracking for the original cast members to have any new cast members at all because “there is such a strong camaraderie, it is a family, and who really likes including new people?” As for the gender issue, she said that she did not think Knoxville or the other filmmakers had much of a plan for how to utilize her talents, saying: “Let’s just see what happens.”

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“I always kept in mind, ‘I don’t ever want to cry on the set of Jackass. As long as I’m not the one crying, I’m fine,’” Wolfson shared. As for the perceived immaturity of the humor, Wolfson said that was never a concern for her. She said: “Dude! I’m in my thirties and I still think penises are hilarious. I always have… That’s just like what sums of Jackass humor, there’s just something about the male anatomy that is hilarious.”

While she is the first woman in the main cast of Jackass, Wolfson is by no means the first woman to risk it all for the franchise. In fact, her appearance has reminded many fans of the 2001 case of Stephanie Hodges, who broke vertibrae in her back while filming a stunt at the time according to a report by The New York Post. 

Wolfson said that she has nothing in particular planned yet to follow the career milestone of appearing in Jackass. She said: “I’m open to anything.” She said that she is still active in stand-up comedy, but she has not upcoming shows listed on her website right now. She also has no upcoming projects listed on her IMDb page. Jackass Forever is in theaters now, and the previous movies are all streaming on Paramount+.