Melissa McCarthy on Weight Criticism: “I am in such a happy spot”

The full story from NY Times:

“Identity Thief” became another box-office hit in February, but a particularly scathing review of the film drew national attention. Writing about the movie for The New York Observer, Rex Reed described Ms. McCarthy as “tractor-sized” and called her “a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success.” Though this review was widely pilloried for its excessive cruelty, Ms. McCarthy did not immediately respond to it.

When Ms. McCarthy was asked about the review over lunch in April, her characteristically cheerful tone evaporated. In a softer voice, she said her initial reaction to reading it had been “Really?” and then, she said, “Why would someone O.K. that?”

Without mentioning the name of its author, Ms. McCarthy said: “I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate. I just thought, that’s someone who’s in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids who are mooning me and singing me songs.”

Had this occurred when she was 20, Ms. McCarthy said, “it may have crushed me.” But now, as a mother raising two young daughters in “a strange epidemic of body image and body dysmorphia,” she said articles like that “just add to all those younger girls, that are not in a place in their life where they can say, ‘That doesn’t reflect on me.’ ”

“That makes it more true,” she said. “It means you don’t actually look good enough.”

Ms. McCarthy was about to say more when the restaurant began a long and very loud test of its fire alarm.

“I imagine that’s my publicist,” she said after a tension-breaking laugh. “The gods didn’t want us discussing this.”

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