Melissa McCarthy Bloopers That Make Us Love Her Even More
What's not to love about Melissa McCarthy? She's completely hilarious. From her many appearances on SNL to her television roles on Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly to her string of awesome feature comedies, almost any scene with McCarthy in it is a guaranteed charmer.
But where her personality really shines is in the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that happen when things go wrong while shooting, yet somehow something hilariously right happens. These bloopers might be even funnier than the onscreen McCarthy silliness we normally get to enjoy, and we're lucky someone thought to keep the camera rolling during these moments.
Here's a look at McCarthy doing what she does best: Cracking up her costars — and us. Beware, a few of the clips are slightly NSFW. (And the one from This is 40 is super NSFW.) From television slip-ups to breakdowns on the sets of her films, these are bloopers that just make us love Melissa McCarthy more.
She keeps everyone laughing
Although the 2016 all-female reboot of the comedy classic Ghostbusters was't a runaway blockbuster like the original, it's hard to deny that Melissa McCarthy was perfectly cast as a ghostbuster. Even original star Bill Murray thinks so. As for the haters? Melissa's so nice she just "hopes they find a friend."
The best part of this behind-the-scenes clip comes when McCarthy and co-stars Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon try desperately — and fail hysterically — to keep a straight face in a scene where they're interviewing Chris Hemsworth to be their secretary. Every new take, the women start cracking up before anyone can utter a single line. McCarthy's infectious laugh gets everyone going, even as she apologizes for breaking up the action yet again.
We also love the candid shots of McCarthy laughing along with her co-stars as they form an impromptu kick-line, celebrate with cake, and do a little cheer before starting a scene together. Not to mention those "pew pew" noises McCarthy makes as she holds her proton pack. That thing packs a big punch in the movie — just like McCarthy's performance.
She makes everything Spicey-er
The four times McCarthy played ex-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer provided some of the biggest laughs of the Saturday Night Live 2017 season. That spot-on comb-over wig! The angry outbursts! Bullying the press corps from the ever-present podium! Even Spicer himself had to admit the portrayal was funny.
Although McCarthy tries hard to stay in character, her sunny demeanor keeps shining through as she rides a podium down the streets of New York City in this outtake from the taping of her final Spicer reprisal on SNL. People on the streets keep yelling, "We love you, Melissa!" and "Spicey!" as she rides by, to which she just has to smile. And when she looks up to see an entire office of people waving to her from a high rise? We see a genuinely excited reaction. McCarthy bursts out laughing, exclaiming, "That's so awesome! That's the greatest thing ever!"
She cracks her husband up every. single. time.
McCarthy and husband Ben Falcone are always a killer comedy combo — even his proposal to her was kind of goofy. In Tammy, which they co-wrote together, Falcone both directs and acts with his wife so it's no wonder things get super silly. In a scene where Falcone is firing McCarthy, he accidentally spills ketchup on her. She quips, "I'm bleeding! Now you have to drink it!" The two constantly break each other up, improvising their way through the scene again and again. It's like they were having too much fun to get it right.
McCarthy's other super-famous co-stars found themselves in similar predicaments when working with her. She and Susan Sarandon giggle freely as Sarandon accidentally pokes herself in the eye with the celery in her Bloody Mary, and when McCarthy tries (and fails) to pull out her impression of Ronald Reagan. And co-star Toni Collette just can't seem to keep a straight face in any scene she's in with McCarthy. She's seen holding her belly, doubled over, and waving at her face because she's laughing so hard.
No wonder McCarthy is one of the highest-paid actresses. She brings joy everywhere she goes.
She's always the Life of the Party
In Life of the Party, another comedy made with Falcone, McCarthy's character Deanna gets crushing news just after dropping her daughter off at college. Her husband wants a divorce instead of celebrating their newly-emptied nest with a trip to Italy. After totally losing it, Deanna makes the decision to go back to college to finish her degree. At the same school where her daughter goes. Of course, hijinks ensue.
The most memorable scenes of the movie also produce the most epic bloopers. When dancing at a party with a frat boy who has a crush on her, McCarthy quips "That went into my birth canal!" about his moves and they both totally lose it, falling out of character. In another, he's trying to convince Deanna to quit college and go backpacking with him. She starts laughing too hard to deliver her line about requiring a bag with wheels at her age.
And who can resist when Deanna is comforting her dog, who's just been shot in the paw by her father? At the end of the scene, McCarthy starts crawling toward the camera. "You have my agent's number," she jokes. "Let me know if I got the part (of the dog)." Her co-stars called her "special, kind and lovely" on an Ellen show, praising McCarthy's and Falcone's uncanny ability to "cherry-pick weirdos" for their projects. Make that funny weirdos.
She can Spy on us anytime
In her 2015 hit Spy, McCarthy plays a CIA agent who's been stuck at a boring desk job for years. After witnessing her partner's death, she makes a play for finally getting in on some action to help catch his killers; a successful chase takes her overseas, where she ends up with an offer to become a bona fide field agent and an exciting new undercover assignment.
It's so much fun to watch McCarthy's character gain confidence over the course of the movie, and nothing's more satisfying than the scene when she finally gets the bad guys right where she wants them. And that's, of course, when the outtakes are best. In an impassioned speech about how she managed to uncover their deadly plot, McCarthy tries to spit out the words "Russian military." It comes out instead as "Russian millinery." When she realizes her mistake, McCarthy riffs, "Nothing's more dangerous than hatmakers! Don't even get me started on the loomers!" On the next take, the phrase becomes "Russian Melissas." Say what? Try as they might, her co-stars can't help but laugh along with her.
Another ongoing blooper is that the actresses in Spy can't ever seem to get the character names right. McCarthy keeps calling Rose Byrne's character Rose instead of Rayna. She can't remember Gallagher and keeps wanting to call the guy Gargamel instead. And the real kicker comes when Allison Janney slips up and says Cher instead of Sharon. McCarthy breaks into a spot-on impression of the singer doing Believe. Big smiles all around.
She always brings The Heat
McCarthy stars with Sandra Bullock in The Heat, a 2013 buddy action movie, as a dirty Boston cop. McCarthy admits to being starstruck and more than a little nervous before she intially reached out to Bullock. The story of their first phone call to talk about working together is cringingly, awkwardly hilarious. But as you can clearly see from the bloopers, the two ended up honest-to-goodness friends.
In one scene Bullock whispers to McCarthy, who is supposed to recoil from her bad breath and say "You've got to get a mint in there." Each time they try to be serious and get it right, but McCarthy dissolves into peals of giggles before she can get the full line out. She apologizes, swears, and then mutters, "I'm trying to think of terrible things!" but nothing works.
Action. Laughter. Action. Laughter. Bullock tries to hold it together, but McCarthy loses it first take after take. Finally, the uber-professional Bullock starts laughing first, to which McCarthy deadpans, "Thank you, I feel better." BFFs 4-eva.
She can absolutely be one of our Bridesmaids
Without a doubt, Bridesmaids is one of the most hilarious (and raunchiest) female buddy comedies of all time. It killed at the box office, grossing nearly $300 million worldwide and garnering a super fresh Rotten Tomato score. And no disrespect to the rest of the stellar cast, but the woman who totally stole that show was Melissa McCarthy. She was even nominated as Best Supporting Actress for playing the weird, strange, completely out-there character Megan.
She has all the best lines. Even better, most of them were reportedly improvised, riffed off of a set opening sentence from which the director let her go off in any direction she wanted. Husband Ben Falcone, who plays love interest Air Marshal Jon in the movie, says he ruined many takes laughing at the outrageous things McCarthy came up with on the spot.
Once again, we have McCarthy mistakenly calling co-star Rose Byrne by her real name instead of her character's name, Helen, in the outtakes. What you don't see, though, is that McCarthy apparently loved making Byrne lose it on set because she was an easy target. Even hearing "Helen" was enough to give Byrne a case of the giggles, so McCarthy started adding extra "Helens" at the beginning and ending of every sentence. "She's so sweet and she's so beautiful, that's it really fun to try to like, verbally destroy her," McCarthy told People.
She's a total Boss babe
In the 2016 film The Boss, another McCarthy-Falcone collaboration, disgraced CEO Michelle Darnell was based on a character McCarthy briefly developed during her time with improv group the Groundlings. McCarthy admits she was never quite able let the Leona Helmsley-like Darnell go. Even 12 years later, she told Howard Stern, she'd be bringing the character up to husband. Finally, Falcone told her, "Before you're a full sociopath, you should write it."
In the bloopers, McCarthy certainly seems thrilled to be back in character. She dances, pratfalls, and tackles her fellow actors with abandon. She also makes Kristen Bell, who plays beleaguered assistant Claire, completely crack up time and again. Whether they're lying in bed talking about Doritos or cheddar cheese or trying to get back at a business nemesis, Bell just cannot seem to keep a straight face in the wake of McCarthy's antics. She giggles, apologizes, begs for one more shot, and finally guffaws, "I'm so sorry, I saw that coming from a mile away."
But it's all good. Bell was McCarthy's first choice for the role because she's so good at rolling with all that improv. "Kristen is the kind of actress that you can say anything to her," McCarthy told Stern. "She will stay in character and respond."
She makes even small parts memorable
In the Judd Apatow comedy This is 40, McCarthy plays a mom who's upset that parents Pete (played by Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) have threatened her son after he posted something mean about their teenage daughter online. She's in basically one scene of the movie that takes place in the principal's office — and true to form for her, it's memorable and funny despite being brief.
But where McCarthy really steals the show is in the closing credits, where director Apatow included one of her totally wild, insanely unhinged improvised takes of the scene that didn't make it into the final cut. In it, McCarthy lobs crazy insults at Pete and Debbie, eventually prompting the principal to ask her if she's been drinking. McCarthy's response? "No, but I'm going to start drinking. I'm going to slit someone open like a fish and drink their blood, that's what I'm going to drink... probably I'm gonna start with Karen Carpenter's head..."
Mann and Rudd try mightily, but they just can't stay in character. Both start cracking up as McCarthy continues on her tirade. Soon, everyone but McCarthy has broken down laughing. Finally, someone yells "Cut!" and she puts her head down on the desk and joins in. And that's how McCarthy wins over every room she steps into.
She always steals the show
In Identity Thief, McCarthy plays what would in most cases be a rather unlikable character: Diana, a con artist who steals the identity of Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman). Yet throughout the course of the comedy, we still end up liking her, because she's Melissa McCarthy.
Originally the script called for a male identity thief, but once Bateman saw McCarthy in Bridesmaids, he knew he had to work with her. Turns out, his hunch was right. Director Seth Gordon told the The Hollywood Reporter that everyone cracked up non-stop during shooting, and said McCarthy made Bateman break up so often he "would often drive with one hand because he had the other hand pinching his legs so he wouldn't laugh."
This Identity Thief blooper was captured during a scene that finds Bateman and McCarthy together in a car. She's telling him that she drives drunk all the time and she's fine, but that she once "drove tired and I went right into an army." He bursts out laughing and exclaims, "It's a good line." She agrees. "It's a GREAT line," he corrects himself. A great line from a gifted comedian and world-class improv artist — and one whose mistakes are often even funnier than whatever's in the script.