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Melissa McCarthy talks ‘Gilmore Girls’ & ‘Samantha Who?’

by Arieanna on November 26th, 2007

Melissa McCarthy was interviewed about her two major comedic roles - on Gilmore Girls and now Samantha Who? - by TV Guide’s Aimee Deeken.
Melissa loves her new gig on Samantha Who? She loves the character of Samantha and how Christina Applegate is interpreting the role - I have to agree with her on that! But Melissa really brings light to what the show is about - and it’s not about amnesia. It’s about second chances:

People say, "Oh, I wish I were 20 again." But if you really think about it, those were hard years. To learn everything through the process of failing certain things, that wasn’t all fun! Maybe you want to go back and have key moments. And that’s why [the show] works. People ask, "How are you going to keep doing the amnesia [storyline] every week?" and it’s not really about that. It’s about getting a second chance, and if you had the chance to do things over and make better choices. That relates to everyone.

It sheds a whole new light on Samantha Who?, for me. Because Sam has really been reliving all the major points of her life. Developing friends, bonding with her family, learning to cook, learning about love. And each time, Sam makes a more conscious choice about who she really wants to be.
For more from the interview, including Melissa McCarthy talking about Gilmore Girls, read on!

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

TVGuide.com: Tell me about the friendship between Dena and Samantha.
McCarthy: I really enjoy the relationship between Dena and Sam because it really is based on something real. You have those friends that you were so close with all through grade school and really have a history with them. That stuff still counts, and I think that’s what gives them their nice relationship.

TVGuide.com: Sam has two best friends, Andrea and Dena. Andrea seems selfish and jaded, a friend in name only. With Dena, is she naïve, or is she just spunky and hopeful compared to Andrea?
McCarthy: I think [writer/exec producer] Don [Todd] wrote a cool character with Dena because she seems so bubbly and sweet on the surface. But when you think about the way she kind of weaseled her way back into Sam’s life in the pilot, that gives her a little more grit.

TVGuide.com: So maybe Dena is selfish too, wanting to mold Samantha into her perfect best friend.
McCarthy: Yeah, into the friend that she had. Even though she’s an adult now, that was a 10- or 12-year relationship all through school. This is her second chance to have that best friend back. And deep down she knows that Sam is a good person, even though she took a wrong turn and has been behaving badly for quite some time. And at the same time, Dena has stepped into this cool-girl world that she’s never been in before, and that keeps it funny.

Now onto some Gilmore Girls tidbits! TV Guide asks Melissa what all of us have wanted to know - how is it to play another best friend? And how are they different?

TVGuide.com: On Gilmore Girls, you played Lorelai’s best friend Sookie, and here you’re Sam’s best friend. Comparing the two, do you see similarities or mostly differences?
McCarthy: At first I was afraid they were going to be pretty similar because they’re both pretty bubbly and kind of high-energy. But the more I get into Samantha Who? I think it’s the possibilities of Dena that make them very different. It started right with the pilot: She’s lying to the family of a woman who’s in a coma!

TVGuide.com: Yeah, I don’t think Sookie would have done that….
McCarthy: I loved playing Sookie but right from the beginning [episode] that made me think, this has a lot of different ways to go. That’s when I knew I wanted the part.

Melissa says she loves the scenes with co-star Jennifer Esposito, who plays Andrea, because their characters are so different. And she loves scenes where the two fight a bit - kind of like playing out different halves of Sam’s thinking. Melissa says she has never had this much fun working before, and just loves her co-stars.

… Jean Smart… I was so freaked out to meet her!

TVGuide.com: Freaked out? You were on Gilmore Girls!
McCarthy: I don’t know [that] I was intimidated; I was just so excited. Especially because I’d done Gilmore Girls for seven years, so getting into another television thing I was a little…. Everyone was saying, "Well, you’ll never have that again, you’ll be lucky if it gets picked up. This will be your real first experience with TV." But the more the cast was accumulated, a lot of people’s opinions changed. I have to say it seems like a nutty job!

Melissa tells us about an upcoming episode with Dena and Jean drinking a lot of wine and attempting to put on makeup. From looking at the spoilers, I have a feeling that this is the December 10th episode titled "The Car".