When producers announced that they were remaking the 1984 action-comedy classic Ghostbusters with a cast of women, the internet predictably erupted in a barrage of abuse. But the cast and crew did their best to ignore it.
Ghostbusters (2016) reunites Melissa McCarthy with director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy), plus Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig and Saturday Night Live players Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones.
Of the social media backlash, McCarthy just laughs. "I don't even talk about it," she says. "It's not like I can improve myself from the criticism. I can't become a better person or a better actor or a better mother, nothing. If somebody has a good point, I am the first to be like, 'Let me have it.' If someone just wants to spew hate, tear down women, I prefer to keep that out of my life."
McCarthy says that what people don't realise is that everyone involved in making the movie loves the original films. "I'm a crazy fan of the first two," she says. "Like I've seen them a weird amount of times. And I know why I love them: it's a feeling I get about those four unlikely heroes that nobody values, that nobody really takes seriously, and yet they save the world and they do the right thing anyway without an 'atta boy' or 'atta girl' ever. I root for that as an audience member, and I thought that this script had that."
And she says it helped that she was bonding with friends on the set. "I mean, Kristin and I have known each other forever," McCarthy says. "And Leslie and Kate and I knew each other from SNL. But something just weirdly clicked. It's the thing you kind of hope for, it was like a volleyball, one popped it up for the next. When it works, you're like, 'This is easy! This is fun!' Every day was a blast and when that's happening and the script's good, you've already kind of won the battle."
From the start, this movie was seen as the beginning of a new franchise, but McCarthy says she has no idea where it's headed. "There's so many possibilities," she says. "But I know that I'd do anything for Paul Feig. He just needs to ask, 'Hey do you want to...' and I'm like, 'Yep! Give me a date.' And with those three women, I would do kind of anything."
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