Melissa McCarthy spoke about her home life, including her recent anniversary and children, when she stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Wednesday.
The actress first discussed her recent 13-year-anniversary with husband Ben Falcone. “We had a very romantic evening at our house with Richard E. Grant, which I thought was kind of lovely,” she said about her co-star in her upcoming movie Can You Ever Forgive Me? “He found out on the way home. He’s like, ‘Wait, this is your anniversary?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, you’re the gift.'”
McCarthy said that she got Falcone a Jitterbug, which she described as “the phone for senior citizens.” As for Falcone’s gift to her, she said she got “two beautiful rings. One that says ‘love.'”
“And I gave him a Jitterbug phone,” she observed. “So I need to work on my romance skills, I think.”
The actress then explained how she started dating her husband. “We were together at a party when he was still in high school and I was in college, but we didn’t talk,” she said. “Later he said, ‘Oh God, I knew who you were’ and I was like, ‘Did I have a cape on?’ He said, ‘Yes.'”
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She said that they met 10 years later. “We met at Groundlings — a theater here — 10 years later. And everybody was like, you know, it was the first day of class. Everybody’s being louder and crazier and doing weirder characters and Ben got up there and was so quiet and was just very peculiar,” she recalled. “He was playing an inmate that really liked his new roommate. He kept calling it a ‘roommate,’ I believe. And he was so quiet and I realized that everybody, myself included, we all were leaning forward and listening and he’s the only one that went really quiet and I immediately was like, ‘Oh, he’s strange. I like him.'”
McCarthy later discussed her daughters, Vivian and Georgette, on the talk show. “They’re both fantastic. The older one, Viv, is definitely Ben. She looks exactly like me and is Ben and the younger one looks just like Ben and is me,” she said. “So the younger one is always just like, ‘Let’s go.’ She’s just feisty.”
“They’re very into Halloween and the debate going into what is being made because I still always want to make their costumes, so when they want something out of a bag, I’m like, ‘No, like, no.’ I’m the one whining,” she said.
The oldest daughter is spending the holiday dressed as a cactus. “She has a green sweat suit and I’ve been sewing on pipe cleaners that stick out all the way,” she said. “And we’re making a headband with cactuses up there, and I may have found cactus shoes online.”
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“And then Georgie is going as the Big Bad Wolfette, which every time someone says, ‘Oh, the Big Bad Wolf,’ she goes, ‘Ette, ette. She’s a woman,'” she said. “What I do love is that she put it all on. It looks amazing. It absolutely looks like she’s in the touring cast of Cats.“
McCarthy added that her youngest daughter is interested in singing and dancing. “She’s very into emoting things now,” she said of Georgie. “So when she’s singing, she’s like,” she said as she made a dramatic face. “And it’s always like, ‘Don’t look at me.’ But then if you do look away, she’s like, ‘No, you have to look.'”
She added that she and Falcone will also dress up for the occasion. “Ben is going as his spirit animal, which is Bob Ross, who he loves so much,” she said, referring to the painter and television host. “He and his wife befriended a squirrel, so I believe I’m going as his friend squirrel.”
The actress later discussed her role as Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me? While the character illegally forges and sells letters written by iconic writers and is ultimately arrested, McCarthy said that she has never been arrested.
“No one’s more surprised than myself or my parents,” she said. “I can say that I did steal a Chunky once.” She explained that the item was “this big chunk of chocolate.”
“My dad came down the aisle. We were in the dime store and I was like (pretends to quickly chew),” she said. “Just suddenly realizing that this is a lot of chocolate to take down. Like, I can’t actually digest it all. And then my dad came around the corner and he’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ and I’m like, ‘I had chocolate in my pocket.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, OK. Come on. We’re going.'”
“And we get in the car and I’m just sweating bullets. I’m probably 4 or 5, something like that,” she recalled. “Sweating bullets, but I’m like, ‘I got away with that Chunky.'”
McCarthy said that her father later brought the incident up while her entire family was in the car. “I was like, ‘You son of a gun.”
While her dad thought nothing of the situation, her mother was more skeptical. “She said, ‘Where did she get it?’ And he said, ‘Well, she had it in her pocket.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, is that right? Did she buy that with her paycheck?’ And she looked back at me again and I was like, ‘Oh, God. I’m in so much trouble.’ And my dad and my sister got out.”
As McCarthy tried to exit the car, her mother stopped her. “My mom’s like, ‘Don’t move’ and she turned the car around and we went back into town and I got a quarter, because I’m 100 and that’s how much a Chunky cost, and I had to go in and I was sobbing and crying,” she recalled. “There was some kid that I thought was an adult, he was probably 17, at the counter and I had this just, ‘I think I stole a Chunky.'”
The actress said that the cashier said it was OK, though she remembers her mother knocking on the window from outside screaming, “It is not OK! Don’t tell her it’s OK!” She said that the event was so traumatic that she “never stole another Chunky.”
