British actress and comedian Miranda Hart stands 186cm, which is a good sight taller than Melissa McCarthy, her co-star in the coming comedy Spy.
“I’ve just seen Melissa for the first time in a year, and I’d forgotten the height difference,” Hart said. “I was like, ‘I’m giving you a hug,’ and she was like, ‘I’m in your bosom.’”
Spy, which opens on Friday, is from writer-director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) and stars McCarthy as a CIA analyst out in the field for the first time and Hart as her mild-mannered friend and colleague, Nancy. McCarthy talked to a real CIA agent for research; Hart just wanted to learn how to manage a computer. “If one email doesn’t come through, I throw the laptop out the window,” she said.
Hart, 42, is a major star in England, where she has had a successful stand-up tour, two best-selling books, and has written and starred in a popular BBC sitcom, Miranda. In the United States she is just beginning to get recognition for Call the Midwife, a period drama on BBC that is airing on PBS, in which she plays an awkward midwife named Chummy. “I kind of knew if it went to the States people would love it, because she’s so upper-class eccentric Brit,” Hart said. “She could definitely be Maggie Smith’s love child.”
She spoke by phone from the Four Seasons in Los Angeles, “which is very exciting for a British person, just because LA is still way more glamorous and exciting than London,” she said. These are excerpts from the conversation.
What did you do in your audition for Spy?
God bless Paul Feig — I didn’t audition. He wrote it with me in mind. He knew my sitcom on the BBC and luckily for me enjoyed it. So now I owe him my life, which is really annoying.
There’s a moment where you’re attacked by bats. Any other indignities?
I had to have a mouse running on my shoulders — I was like please, let that be in the edit. It was a real mouse. They put it on my shoulder, and I could feel it sort of in my neck. That’s a weird day at work, isn’t it?
Like most British actors, are you classically trained?
I did do a year at drama school in London, and being tall and, as they kept saying, ‘unusual-looking,’ [I realised] I’m never going to get the sort of girlfriend or daughter parts, or slot into Shakespeare very well. I got the sense that I was going to have to do my own material. I thought, no one else was going to write me a lead in sitcom; I’m going to have to do it.
Are you famous enough in Britain that you can’t walk in the street?
I think the paparazzi have realised that I lead such a boring life that they don’t follow me anymore — it’s me walking my dog, yet again. [But] I wouldn’t particularly enjoy walking in a shopping mall in the UK. It’s kind of nice coming here, because no one knows me. Check-in at Four Seasons, it was like, ‘Oh, you want ID? Yes, of course!’
Will you spend more time in LA now?
I would love to work more out here. I think there’s more — it’s hard to describe — more energy somehow. Back home, we go to moaning within seconds: ‘There’s no tea, no proper tea bags.’
50 Cent is in Spy, and you have a physical altercation with him. Did you have to psych yourself up for that?
That was my first scene. Running, tackling him to the ground. In a way, it was good, because otherwise I would have spent weeks working out, ‘What will I say to him?’ But instead it was, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, now I’m going to lie on top of you.’
