Melissa McCarthy Based Her Bridesmaids Character On This Food Network Chef
Melissa McCarthy admitted to modeling her Bridesmaids character on a Food Network personality and, we promise you, it's not who you probably think it is. Yes, McCarthy and Ina Garten are friends. They're such good friends that McCarthy said "second only to the day my babies were born," making cocktails with Garten for a discovery+ special "was pretty much the best day of my life" (via People). But her Bridesmaids character, Megan, isn't based on Ina Garten.
Megan, who GQ lovingly describes as a "self-made woman of great machismo, voracious sexual appetites, mysterious financial resources, and a truly atrocious wardrobe," was never supposed to be. But McCarthy changed that when she auditioned for Bridesmaids. She'd connected to the part before she even got it. The actress told EW that after auditioning, she thought she'd made the character "too weird" — not in the least because she'd gone into it without make-up, and with "a bad pant." Now you can rule out Giada de Laurentiis and her BFF, the perfectly tailored Bobby Flay.
Melissa McCarthy modeled her character after Guy Fieri
"Really, when I first read it, the first person that I thought of was Guy Fieri from the Food Network," McCarthy explained to Conan O'Brien (via Vulture). "I wanted to do the shirt, the Kangol. Every scene I would have my glasses on the back of my head." The Emmy award-winner even wanted to wear her hair short, bleached, and spiked like Fieri's. The film's directors, to our great disappointment, nixed that. "They were like, 'You can't actually be Guy Fieri. Cut it off at some point!'" McCarthy joked to O'Brien. If you want to know who to thank, McCarthy's inspiration for Megan-as-Fieri came from her and her husband Ben Falcone's obsession with Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.
And so, Fieri may never be cast as a Marvel or DC superhero (a gig he seems to be intent on auditioning for via Twitter). He can, however, rest easy knowing that he's been immortalized in another kind of movie. Perhaps, you've seen Fieri-inspired characters in many more after that. According to The Guardian, most of McCarthy's post-Bridesmaids roles have "at least a shred of that shamelessness" that the actress exhibited while imitating Fieri during her 2011 hit.