Melissa McCarthy verbally attacked a reporter for being sexist and criticizing her movie ‘Tammy’.
Melissa McCarthy called sexism in Hollywood an “intense sickness” in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. McCarthy went on to explain the time she confronted a reporter who said that she was “only a good actor when [she] looked more attractive.”
From Entertainment Weekly:
At the Toronto Film Festival last September, a critic who had written a particularly vicious review of ‘Tammy’ approached McCarthy to praise the new movie she was there to promote, St. Vincent. “Are you the one who wrote I was only a good actor when I looked more attractive and that my husband should never be allowed to direct me because he allowed me to look so homely?” she asked him. He admitted he was. “Would you say that to any guy?” she continued. “When John C. Reilly—or any actor—is playing a character that is depressed and dejected, would you say, ‘Well, you look terrible!’?” She asked the critic if he had a daughter. He did. “Watch what you say to her,” she told him. “Do you tell her she’s only worthwhile or valid when she’s pretty?”
“For someone who has two daughters, I’m wildly aware of how deep that rabbit hole goes,” McCarthy adds. “But I just don’t want to start listening to that stuff. I’m trying to take away the double standard of ‘You’re an unattractive bitch because your character was not skipping along in high heels.’”
This is not the first time Melissa McCarthy verbally attacked someone. On set of ‘Tammy’, McCarthy kicked an extra off set while it filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. The woman was an extra on the movie, and brought her kid to a day-long shoot at a lake. According to reports, the woman was having trouble getting the child to stay quiet for much of the morning, and she was seen telling the kid to “stop it” and “quiet down”. The situation became an issue when McCarthy caught the mother jerking the child in the air by the wrist. Unsurprisingly, McCarthy fired the woman and had production assistants take the woman off the premises, the actress saying she wouldn’t tolerate abuse on her set.
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