Speaking to the New York Times about the sexist backlash that has dogged the all-female Ghostbusters reboot, Melissa McCarthy makes a compelling point: If you’re worried about a lady with a proton pack ruining your childhood, you probably didn’t have a great childhood to begin with.
“I think their childhood was pretty much ruined already,” said McCarthy of the small (but shockingly vocal!) contingent of dudes whose reaction to the film has been the intellectual equivalent of a baby pounding its drool-covered fists on the table while screaming. “If this broke it, it was pretty fragile to begin with … Normal, healthy people don’t stand outside, saying, ‘You’re ruining my childhood!’ There’s one nut on every corner in every city that does it.”
“I’m surprised, because women have been killing it for years,” adds Leslie Jones about the intense backlash surrounding the film. “It’s the same thing, when you go to a comedy club. [announcer’s voice] ‘Are you guys ready for a woman?’ Are you ready for a unicorn? Why is being a woman so surprising? There are two sexes. A man and a woman. So, if it’s not a man in a movie, what else was it going to be?”
“I think it’s the death throes of the old guard. It makes a smaller minority scream louder, because they’re losing their grip on the cliff,” says director Paul Feig, whose 2011 comedy Bridesmaids is often held up as an example of successful female-led comedies. (Five years later, it also serves as a reminder of how rare such films still are.) “It’s not fair, that in 2016 we should be in this situation where this is standard. That’s where Hollywood should go, ‘Wow, we are so behind the times.’ There’s so much gender diversity and parity, in other fields. Here it just hasn’t happened and that’s ridiculous … I just want it to be the new normal, where it doesn’t matter anymore. The whole ‘chick-flick’ idea is an excuse for guys not to have to see something. It’s what I consider to be a derogatory title.”
But the interview isn’t solely about responding to haters. There are also fun tidbits, like when Melissa McCarthy reveals she “carr[ies] Kate around, on my hip, like a tiny baby koala.”
We look forward to a world where actresses spend less time responding to sexist trolls and more time sharing beautiful anecdotes like this one.
