Melissa McCarthy is opening up about enduring a toxic workplace.
The “Little Mermaid” actress recalled being on an “unstable and hostile set” that left her “physically ill” due to alleged manipulative behavior exhibited by those in charge. McCarthy said she finally stood up to the troubled leader after more people were fired and others left “weeping.”
“I once worked for someone who ran such an unstable and hostile set that it made me physically ill,” McCarthy said The Guardian. “My eyes were swelling up, I was soaking up all this craziness.”
She continued: “There were people crying, visibly so upset by this person. And I think that’s why the manipulation worked, because to get to me, this person would have fired people I loved, which kept me quiet. It was very effective.”
The “Nine Perfect Strangers” star added, “Then one day I was like, ‘It’s stopping today!’ I kept telling them, “Stop, stop.” And now I know that I will never shut up again.
McCarthy and her husband, production partner Ben Falcone, started the production company called On the Day with one rule for sets: the “asking” of kindness.
“You know, we were so amazed and grateful that we can build our own little worlds, we were like, ‘We need to build the one that we’ve always talked about, where everyone gets to have an opinion and everyone is really nice. It will work much better with no howlers or crazy egos bumbling around. Why should we risk destroying it?’” McCarthy said.
The “Ghostbusters” actress noted, however, that “it’s a fistfight trying to make comedy right now” despite the need for laughs in the current state of the world.
“I don’t know why, because we’ve never needed to laugh more,” she said. “Comedy allows you to sit next to someone whose ideas don’t match. And maybe come out a little closer. I think that’s what I should do, in this world. I can’t do many useful things. I don’t know how to clean up the oceans or stop our violent tendencies. But I can hopefully give someone who’s had a bad day an hour and a half to step into a different world where bills or sickness aren’t the main thing on their brain. This is the only skill set I really have. So I have to keep trying.
McCarthy recently expressed his desire to revisit the hit comedy “Bridesmaids” as soon as possible.
“That group of women was the most magical thing ever. Most of us were already good friends. I think it was such a magical moment,” McCarthy said of the 2011 film starring Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne. “I would be doing a sequel to ‘Bridesmaids’ this afternoon, right now.”
