That was something that got developed, here was always a scene in the dress store, but it was more about this argument between Helen and Annie about the dress and also to show that she didn’t have any money and the wedding was getting too expensive.
It had a very funny fantasy sequence where Kristen’s character things that she looks so good in the dress that she had this fantasy about all these men fighting over her - it was fun but it was totally not going to fit in the film.
We also felt that we needed a big funny scene there and it was Judd who came up with the idea of everyone getting food poisoning.
I was like ‘that’s really funny’ I think the girls where a little horrified when they first heard this but, again, this is not just about everyone vomiting all over the place it was a great way to illustrate that you have screwed up, you have no money and that is why you forced everyone to go to this cheap restaurant that you tried to pass off as a good place.
She screwed up so that is one strike against her with Lillian but also it’s a great way to show a side of her character that won’t back down and she can’t admit when she is wrong - she is so caught up in this Helen fight that she will not admit to her that the restaurant gave then food poisoning. And that was a fun way to illustrate a very real point.
- The film brings together a brilliant cast with great performances from Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy in particular so can you talk me through the casting process?
It’s the nice thing of having Judd produce this movie because his name kind of gives us the scope not to cast A-list stars - all we cared about was casting who was going to be funniest in the role.
So we had Kristen, obviously, all of the time but then we just started bringing in all the funny women that we knew and that we didn’t know, that the casting director had brought it, and we did a lot of improv in the auditions.
What we do is write up scenes that aren’t in the film for the auditions because we wanted to get the feel of the characters - so we would write up these big dialogue conversations between somebody and them; so they had three pages of dialogue to really show who they are.
We would tell them that they didn’t have to stick to the script they could make it whatever they want; we didn’t want word for word readings. So then we would kind of get a feel for them and then we would always do an improv scene at the end of the audition so we could see what their skills were in that regard.
By the time we had got the cast together they were full formed characters who we then started re-writing to - writing to their voices and who they are; Chris O’Dowd is the perfect example because that part was never written to be Irish.
He came in, I had been a big fan of his from the I.T. Crowd, and he came in doing an American accent and I was like ‘You can do you Irish accent’ and it was so great - and the chemistry between him and Kristen was so big that we were like ‘he’s going to be an Irish cop and we are going to start writing to that’. So we really built it organically.
Maya we cast because we are big fans, but she is also good friends with Kristen and we wanted to make sure we had that best friend chemistry.
We cast Rose Byrne because I was very afraid of that role of Helen becoming too arched, we have seen those roles a million times before where she is the bitch, it doesn’t feel real. We saw a lot of comediennes and comic actresses for that role but always played to arch when they would do it.
Rose had just done Get Him To The Greek for Judd’s company, she was so funny in that, and we like lets have her play the part because she is a great actress and she can ground it and yet make it sympathetic.
Then Melissa was just someone who came in and read at the end of the process, we were casting for a long time, and it was Kristen who said ‘my friend Melissa is hilarious and people always queue up to see her when she performs’ and she came in and she just blew us all away.
We had seen some incredibly funny women for this role but her take on it was just so different anybody else that it was kind of a no-brainer.
- And it is a very collaborative move so how did you find working with Kristen and the rest of the girls?
I loved it! I have worked with so many women in may career and so many of my friends have been girls and women, all the funniest girls were my friends in high school.
I had a great time and they couldn’t have been nicer - there was a real camaraderie on the set; since most of them are improv performers it is hard to get divaish when you come from that world because you are so dependant on your fellow cast members. So there wasn’t a competition at all - if anything it was about trying to make each other laugh - which is great for us.
- As I say the film has been a huge success so has it done as well as you expected or better?
It did a little better than I thought it would (laughs), I mean you never go into a movie thinking it’s not going to do well, I remember thinking, from a numbers point of view, if this movie could make $100million that would be fantastic - that would have been a validation that these movies work and women want to see this movies.
I think that it definitely surpassed my expectations quite a bit but I could not be more thrilled. I did feel a lot of pressure going into this one because I didn’t want to be the guy who screwed it up for women I didn’t want people to say ’see women can’t carry a movie’ or ’people won’t show up for this type of film’. So it was really exciting that this movie did well because it just a validation for so many funny women that I know.
- Finally what’s next for you?
I am developing a project for Melissa, a love story, that I am just finishing writing, and we are hoping to shoot this coming summer.
Bridesmaids is out on DVD & Blu-Ray now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Bridesmaids Paul Feig