The Queen

Dedicated to her craft, devoted to her family, MELISSA MCCARTHY is as empathetic as she is funny, and the world is responding in kind

- Laura Brown

Melissa McCarthy is thoughtfully perusing a menu at a restaurant in Los Angeles’s Silverlake neighborhood. She looks like a very chic art teacher this evening, wearing a black turtleneck and a Klimt-esque velvet robe. She pulls out a pair of dark pink Gucci reading glasses, which make her resemble the poster for Life of the Party if the party were … fashion.

It’s a good time to be McCarthy right now, even though she, of course, excels at creating good times for other people. She’s been nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award as best actress for her performance as the late biographer Lee Israel (who infamously forged letters from quotables like Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward) in Can You Ever Forgive Me? It’s her first dramatic role, and it makes you wonder why it took so long. McCarthy’s humanity and pathos illuminate everything she does—her big-screen gags, highly physical or deliberately sly—and she is clearly proud that her exploration of a less rib-tickling story is paying off. After we order tequila gimlets (“Oh, I’m a Scotch girl, but I’m gonna try one,” she says), we talk badassery and beyond.

LAURA BROWN: Can You Ever Forgive Me? received glorious reviews, and now you have all this awards talk. Have you felt any sort of palpable change?