Please spare a thought for the plight of the middle-aged actress in Hollywood. Undervalued, underpaid and underemployed, these women are marooned in a youth-worshipping world that exists on a diet of robots and mutants.
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. A recent survey found that only 12 per cent of the lead characters of last year’s 100 highest-grossing films were female. All the more miraculous, then, that in such a bleak environment Melissa McCarthy can become a star.
By 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. 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. 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.
“It was like a religious moment,” says Feig, of McCarthy’s audition. “It actually took me 30 seconds to realise it was even funny. She made the decision to play the character kind of guy-ish, like, we’re gonna go out and make a man sandwich.”
In a cast packed with comedic powerhouses, McCarthy’s unfiltered character, Megan, made the most visceral impression. Whether she was slapping sense into Wiig, sexually harassing a sky marshal or surrendering to an explosive bout of diarrhoea (“It’s coming out of me like lava!”), she held the movie hostage in her every, mostly improvised, scene. “It was a great part,” McCarthy recalls. “I didn’t wear any make-up. I communicated telepathically with dolphins.”
Historically, a scene-stealing role in a successful comedy leads to a subsequent career as a character actor. But Paul Feig saw in Melissa McCarthy the De Niro/DiCaprio to his Scorsese — the collaborator who would delight in and elevate every challenge he threw her way. Subsequently, he cast her as the two-fisted loudmouth Boston cop opposite by-the-book Sandra Bullock in his 2013 police comedy The Heat. She’ll be teaming up again with Kristen Wiig in Feig’s 2106 all-girl Ghostbusters remake, but the current chapter in their ongoing collaboration is the big, broad espionage comedy Spy.
“It’s not anywhere in the ballpark of being a spoof,” declares McCarthy. “It’s a real action movie and it’s really funny.”
Torrents of profanity
McCarthy’s character, Susan Cooper, begins the movie as an underappreciated CIA analyst who is unrequitedly infatuated with the secret agent (Jude Law) she monitors from her desk. When he takes a bullet to the head, Susan Cooper becomes James Bond.
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. The very game cast also includes Rose Byrne, Miranda Hart (occupying the sweetly quirky best-friend role), Peter Serafinowicz and 50 Cent. 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.
Swearing is a hallmark of the partnership between McCarthy and Feig. I tell McCarthy that watching her turn the air blue in Spy is like watching a virtuoso solo on her instrument. “I get to have those cathartic moments saying insane horrible things,” she says. “There was a point in The Heat when we were up to 126 F-bombs in one scene. Paul was behind the camera shouting, ‘More, more!’ I was like, ‘There aren’t any more, they’re all gone.’”
“When it works, it works like jazz,” says Feig happily. “I can’t get enough of it. 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 my kids are 18, I’ll tell them you made me say these things,” says McCarthy, giving her director an accusatory scowl.
“I’ve never heard her swear in real life,” notes Feig. 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. “Paul is one of the loveliest human beings on the planet,” McCarthy gushes. “On top of being one of the funniest people in the world, Melissa is also an amazing actress,” Feig fires back. A little icky, cynics? Perhaps, but theirs is a bond born out of finding and then liberating each other. “I was in movie jail for a while and I just assumed I was never getting out,” said Feig. “I’m just so happy to get to do stuff with Melissa where we have our own voice.” Says McCarthy: “I didn’t think anyone would ever let me play one of those strange women that I love so much. I didn’t know how I was ever going to get a chance to do that in comedies — and then this guy came along.”
‘Enough of a voice’
I ask what it’s like coming late to success in a culture that prizes instant fame. “I almost have no real place for it in my head,” admits McCarthy. “I don’t dwell on it. I finish one job and go on to the next. I always assume a day-and-a-half from now, I’ll never work again. I was pretty happy with just being a working actor. To be able to let go of all my side jobs was the big goal. But now... To be able to work with exactly who I want to work with, my God, I can’t really put into words how it feels because I still can’t believe it’s happening.”
What has happened to McCarthy since 2011 is without precedent. Forty-four-year-old actresses known for playing best friends don’t suddenly become lead actresses in movies. They don’t make the switch to drama, as McCarthy did in 2014’s St Vincent, and they certainly don’t see movies they wrote and produced get made, as she did with last year’s Tammy and will do with 2016’s Michelle Darnell. How does it feel to suddenly have these opportunities available? “Whatever little thing I do now has a bit of value,” she says. “I love to pitch things and I have enough of a voice now that I can say, ‘Can I play the part like this? Is this weird?’ Someone may say no, but my brain works in a way that you see blue and I see green, but maybe orange is what will work.”
McCarthy and Feig have staked out their own unique territory, but movie comedies are still a relatively female-free zone, especially compared to the volume and variety of funny women on TV. (You could point to the smash success of Pitch Perfect 2 as the harbinger of a sea change, but Anna Kendrick recently complained, “There’s [a film I’m considering] now where I have to wait for all the male roles to be cast before I can even become a part of the conversation”.) I start to count female-centric TV comedies on my fingers: Girls, Inside Amy Schumer, Broad City, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Mindy Project. McCarthy interrupts my list and gives me an impatient glare. She’s heard it all before.
“They take all our tools away. This is the woman in the movie. They want you to look incredible. You should be in heels and have your hair done. Can you do some artisanal job, or work in a shoe department in Manhattan? And can you be blindingly beautiful and have an adorable personality but you can’t get a date. You’re left with a one-dimensional character and who cares? Then they go, ‘Huh, women aren’t funny.’”
“It’s harpy or hot,” continues McCarthy. “There’s nothing in between. Don’t all these people live with interesting women, quirky women, neurotic women, funny women, smart women, challenging women? So much of it gets cut off at the knees and it doesn’t make it into the movies. I know all you funny writers have funny wives, yet you don’t write a funny wife or a funny boss. Paul doesn’t think like that. He doesn’t put people in categories.”
“I can only make so many movies,” Feig replies. “Don’t let me be the one where it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s got it covered.’” Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig don’t envisage their partnership ending anytime soon. Even before their Ghostbusters redo has commenced shooting, Feig is already writing a Spy sequel. McCarthy’s unexpected surge into mid-life movie stardom is exciting to behold, but you fear that it’s unlikely to be a recurring phenomenon. She’s not following any recognised career pattern, and it’s too soon to tell whether or not her success will open the door to other long-serving sidekicks. So while she occupies her current position, let’s enjoy every profanity-packed minute we have of her.
Spy releases in the UAE on June 4.
