Read on for highlights from the discussion.
I loved Lee, Heller told the audience.
And so there was just something nice and radical to me about that.
Mary Cybulski/Fox Searchlight
It shouldnt be radical, but it felt really radical.
I loved her and I immediately said yes.
She was such a good writer she could almost channel Dorothy Parker.
She could channel Noel Coward.
Writers no one can write like.
For her it was almost like she was channeling these people.
Addressing McCarthy, she continued: And I feel kind of that way about you with Lee, too.
Your energy is so different from Lee.
Melissa walks into a room shes like bright, shiny, luminescent.
She has this light, joyful energy.
And Lee is, like, rooted to the ground, the opposite.
Like she has a rain cloud over her head.
I would see you on the weekend and almost not recognize you, because youd be you.
And the energy was so different from Lee.
It really was amazing to see.
Lee has pushed everyone away.
And Jack is in the midst of the AIDS crisis and he has nobody, because everybody has died.
For whatever reason, that was the heart of the story to me….
The script did have many incarnations.
And I took that tidbit and wrote this last scene between the two of them.
I just needed an emotional ending for his character, and for the two of them together.
Our development execs, our producers, our line producers, our editor.
I dont know any perfect women.
I dont know how to play pleasant or blonde.
All my friends are nuts.
They always need a qualifier like, Theyre actually great, just get to know them.
But thats why you love people.
We dont love people because theyre pleasant.
Its rare you get to play a woman like that.
Those are the women I know, theyre complicated and challenging.
Heller chimed in, She was doing them at the same time.
I remember our first week filming, Melissa was like, They asked me to play Sean Spicer.
Should I do this?
And it was like, Heck yeah.
When McCarthy was asked if Israel wouldve liked Spicer, she answered, She would devour him.
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