A little icky, cynics? Perhaps, but theirs is a bond born out of finding and then liberating each other. “On top of being one of the funniest people in the world, Melissa is also an amazing actress,” Feig fires back. “Paul is one of the loveliest human beings on the planet,” McCarthy gushes. When I sit down with Feig – a noted dandy, resplendent in grey pinstripe suit, purple tie and pocket square – and McCarthy – casual in head-to-toe black – the mutual affection and admiration is obvious. “I’ve never heard her swear in real life,” notes Feig. The real Agent Cooper: McCarthy as CIA operative Susan in Spy. “When my kids are 18, I’ll tell them you made me say these things,” says McCarthy, giving her director an accusatory scowl. Sometimes she’ll go to say something terrible and then she’ll stop and she’ll say, ‘I can’t say that.’ I say, ‘You have to, because whatever comes out of your mouth, I know it’s going to be the finest goddamn thing.’” “When it works, it works like jazz,” says Feig happily. Paul was behind the camera shouting, ‘More, more!’ I was like, ‘There aren’t any more, they’re all gone.’” “There was a point in The Heat when we were up to 126 F-bombs in one scene. “I get to have those cathartic moments saying insane horrible things,” she says. I tell McCarthy that watching her turn the air blue in Spy is like watching a virtuoso solo on her instrument. Swearing is a hallmark of the partnership between McCarthy and Feig. But this is a starring vehicle for McCarthy, who blasts through the movie flattening adversaries with German suplexes and driving them to tears with torrents of profanity. The very game cast also includes Rose Byrne, Miranda Hart (occupying the sweetly quirky best-friend role), Peter Serafinowicz and 50 Cent.
Spy inserts McCarthy into the expected genre tropes: disguises (Cooper dresses up as an guileless American tourist complete with cat T-shirt), fights, chases, casinos, jets and European locations, plus it gives her a disdainful espionage rival in the shape of Jason Statham, who ought to strongly consider a mid-career detour into comedy. She made the decision to play the character kind of guy-ish, like, we’re gonna go out and make a man sandwich.”Ī pizza the action: Melissa McCarthy in Spy. “It actually took me 30 seconds to realise it was even funny. “It was like a religious moment,” says Feig, of McCarthy’s audition. Then she auditioned for Bridesmaids, the ensemble comedy co-written by Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Wiig and directed by Paul Feig, creator of the immortal Freaks And Geeks.
In 2010, she became the co-star of Mike & Molly, a bland sitcom built around the idea that two heavyset people in a relationship is, in itself, hilarious.
All the more miraculous, then, that in such a bleak environment Melissa McCarthy can become a star.īy the time she turned 41, Chicago-born McCarthy was making a decent living playing sweetly quirky TV sidekicks whose main function was to assure the leading lady Mr Right was just about to walk through the door.
A recent survey found that only 12% of the lead characters of last year’s 100 highest-grossing films were female. Maggie Gyllenhaal recently bemoaned the fact that, at the ripe old age of 37, she was considered too decrepit and doddering to convincingly portray the love interest of a 55-year-old leading man. Undervalued, underpaid and underemployed, these women are marooned in a youth-worshipping world that exists on a diet of robots and mutants. P lease spare a thought for the plight of the middle-aged actress in Hollywood.