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Melissa McCarthy recently reached a major career milestone, playing Ursula in the controversial live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. “She’s categorized as the villain, but I have a complicated view of Ursula,” she said of her villainous role. “She’s misunderstood, damaged.”
The actress has come a long way since her tough early days in Hollywood when she only had $5 in her bank and her cousin Jenny McCarthy was still helping her get gigs. It wasn’t until Gilmore Girls that she graduated from uncredited parts and working as a production assistant.
Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of the show, even fought for the Nine Perfect Strangers star. “They weren’t sure. It wasn’t that people didn’t like her, but she was a different energy. She was a different kind of chick,” the former explained during the cast’s reunion panel at 2015 ATX TV Festival.
“And the part was just written for a woman, There was no body type, there was nothing specific about it. I was like, ‘I need someone funny who could really act,'” she added. Unfortunately, the big opportunity turned out to be “sweaty” one as well. Here’s what McCarthy has recently said about her time playing Sookie.
Gilmore Girls Was Melissa McCarthy’s ‘First Job In The Business’
In an interview with Howard Stern, McCarthy revealed that Gilmore Girls was her “first job in the business” after struggling to break into acting for years. “It ran for seven years it was the first time like I could say I’m an actress […] That was my first job in the business,” she told the host. “I actually learned a lot from that..”
She continued: “It was incredibly nice because that’s what I wanted, I was like, ‘I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know how any of it works.’ I’d only been in theater. And that job literally, every single time I do something today, it’s made me better.” She also talked about the off-camera jobs she got with the help of her cousin.
“Everything. You did the garbage, you cleaned up, you did craft service, you’d do every single thing, I dropped the film at night,” she recalled. “I was the first one there and the last one to leave and its – like, I wish everybody that went into the business had to do that.” Then in 2011, four years after Gilmore Girls wrapped, she did the hit comedy film, Bridesmaids.
“Everybody freaked out the week before [the premiere],” the Spy alum recalled. “They’re like, ‘Numbers are going down, it’s not tracking like we thought.’ And I kept saying, ‘It’s going to open great.'” The movie went on to gross $24.6 million on the opening weekend and $306.4 million in total box office sales. It also opened more opportunities for the actress.
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Melissa McCarthy Worked In ‘Crammed’ Spaces During Gilmore Girls
Although McCarthy is eternally grateful for Gilmore Girls, it wasn’t an easy time filming the show back then. “Sometimes we were, like, crammed into small things with coats on but it was actually like 112 degrees in Burbank, [California]. And we were like, ‘Brrr, Connecticut!” she said in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“And I was like, ‘Are we explaining why I have Malaria and why I’m in a full flop sweat?'” she continued, noting that someone even fainted at one point. “When we did our first poster, someone passed out. Like, just [passed] out cold because we were all in coats and trying to look blustery and we were just sweating in weird places and [they were] like,’ Look cold!'” Yikes…
Why Melissa McCarthy Only Appeared Once In The Gilmore Girls Reunion
McCarthy only made a brief appearance in Gilmore Girls‘ four-episode reunion on Netflix back in 2016. Ahead of its premiere, she told E! News: “I don’t think I am [going to appear]. I didn’t actually get asked to do it. But I think they thought I was busy, and then by the time it did come up, then I actually was.” However, she clarified there’s no bad blood between her and the showrunners.
A month before that, Sherman-Palladino said that it was just a schedule conflict, nothing else. “But the thing I have said [to her team] is, ‘Look, if Melissa is available and has an afternoon free, I’ll write her a scene. Melissa was one of us. If she has a spare moment to run over [to the set] — even if for just a cameo — we would be totally game,'” the director told TVLine at that time.
Later on, McCarthy broke the good news about her cameo. “I went back and visited about two weeks ago and saw the sets again and everybody on them and it just felt — oh, my God, I get so sentimental,” she shared to Us Weekly. “It felt like the greatest idea in the world. It was just lovely. It was just lovely.”
She continued: “There was the longest time when it was just not going to work out, schedule-wise, and then once we decided, like, ‘Is there any possible way?’ Something big fell out for me [and] something changed for them.'”
