Credit: Universal PicturesIn an interview with The Observer, Academy Award-nominated actress Melissa McCarthy revealed that there was one production where the working conditions were personally abusive toward her.
Melissa McCarthy initially earned public attention for her role as Sookie St. James in Gilmore Girls (2000-2007). However, her popularity exploded with her Oscar-nominated performance as Megan Price in Bridesmaids (2011). That same year, she began playing Molly Flynn in Mike & Molly (2010-2016). The role would earn her two Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Leading Actress in a Comedy.
Since then, she has gone on to star in multiple successful comedies, including The Heat (2013), Tammy (2014), Spy (2015), The Boss (2016), and Ghostbusters (2016). She also received a second Academy Award nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) and plays Ursula in the upcoming The Little Mermaid (2023) live-action remake.
However, not every job was perfect for the usually jovial McCarthy. In fact, there was one production where the working conditions were so terrible that it actually affected her health.
Melissa McCarthy: “It Made Me Physically Ill.”
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In an interview with The Observer, Melissa McCarthy opened up about a truly horrible onset experience. “I did work for someone once who ran such a volatile, hostile set that it made me physically ill. My eyes were swelling up, I was absorbing all of this nuttiness.”
McCarthy continued, “There were people weeping, visibly so upset by this one person. And I think that’s why the manipulation worked, because to get to me, this person would fire people I loved, which kept me quiet. It was very effective.”
However, there was only so much one person could take. “Then one day, I was like, ‘It stops today!’ I just kept saying to them, ‘It stops, it stops.’ And I know now I’ll never keep quiet again.”
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However, this experience caused McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone, to take a different approach when starting their own production company, On The Day Productions.
“You know, we were so astounded and grateful at getting to build our own little worlds, we were like, ‘We have to build the one we’ve always talked about, where everybody gets to have an opinion, and everyone is really nice. It’s going to run a lot better with no screamers or crazy egos bumbling around. Why would we risk destroying that?'”
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