Interview (Written): Paul Feig (“Spy”)
A Nerdist interview with director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) who wrote and directed the upcoming comedy Spy.
Nerdist: I always love when you and Melissa McCarthy team together, because you guys have such a good creative chemistry. Why do you find yourself working with her on such a consistent basis?
Paul Feig: We just get each other. It’s very rare that you kind of find somebody who’s so like-minded, especially in comedy. There’s all different types of comedy, and I love all types of comedy. But this is my take on the world, and these are the things I care about. It’s real, but it’s funny, but we make sure that they’re truthful, and she’s just in the exact same world. So we’re always in synch, and we have such a shorthand. It’s funny, now, these days, when I give her–you could hear us, me giving her notes, and I’m always like [wildly gestures]–“OK, you got it!”
N: With just a gesture.
PF: Yeah, it’s like a weird, telepathic thing.
N: And this one you actually wrote and directed yourself. What was that like, taking on both writing and directing?
PF: I mean, it’s funny. It was an original idea, because it just came from wanting to do–I’ve always wanted to do a spy movie. I would have loved to do a Bond movie. I’ve always let my agents know, but it’s like, oh, yeah–they’re going to hire me after doing Bridesmaids. You know? That’s never going to happen. So I just wanted to do one, and after The Heat, I really got caught up with the minor action elements within that, and I was like “I want to do something bigger!”
And I thought, “I know a lot of funny women.” So I wrote my own spy movie with a lady lead, and it was just kind of as easy as that. And then I thought about it and I had a million ideas, wrote it up, and honestly, I didn’t write for Melissa, because I didn’t think she was available. I just kind of wrote it for, you know–all the funny women I know are very, very nice in real life, and down to earth.
And I just thought, yeah, the story was this nice, down to earth person, who then gets put into an extraordinary situation and has to be these different personas. There are a lot of people who could do it. But then when Melissa read and wanted to do it, it was like, “That’s a home run.”
N: Of course.
PF: Because you’re just so invested in her being out there.
N: I think there’s also just something fun and relatable about the film–it’s what everyone at the office thinks about all day. “I’m just a mild-mannered reporter by day, but at night I can go out and save the world.”
PF: Exactly. I always refer to it as it’s like Harry Potter for adults.
N: Awesome!
PF: You’re going, “I’m just a normal person, but I have an extraordinary person inside me!”
Here is a trailer for Spy:
For the rest of the interview, go here.