Melissa McCarthy and her mother, Sandra, are very close. As Melissa was finding her footing in Hollywood and New York City, Sandra was supporting her daughter’s quasi-aimlessness from afar; a compassion that Melissa says she may not have been able to mimic.
We just said, ‘If she doesn’t want to go to college, OK. Let’s let her give this new thing a try,’” Sandy said, in interview with AARP.
“Which is kind of terrible parental advice,” Melissa interjected. “But also the greatest thing I could have possibly asked for. Mom never said, ‘You can’t,’ but that’s how she is about everything. She gave me the freedom to do what I needed, even if she didn’t understand it. A normal parent might have said, ‘You’re insane.’ Instead, this maniac kept saying, ‘OK, good luck. Let me know what play you’re doing.’ I was, like, ‘My mother’s crazy!’”
Crazy, maybe not. Crazy in love? Absolutely.
“I don’t know how you did it, Mom,” Melissa said. “I would have said, ‘This is silly. You’re not going to become an actor. The odds of this are ridiculous, and you should move home and knock it off.’ But you’d just send me 70 bucks, 200 bucks. The fact that you didn’t give me guilt changed the course of my life. Because if I’d been guilted out, I definitely would have quit.”
Sources:
https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/celebrities/info-2018/melissa-mccarthy-news-interview.html
