Write & wrong

Melissa McCarthy gets serious playing a forger of celebrity letters

NEW YORK — Playing a depressive, desperately poor middle-aged lesbian in Friday’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” has been a big plus for Melissa McCarthy.

The A-list comedienne drops the laughs to play troubled freelance biographer Lee Israel.

“I didn’t pick it for any different reason than I do everything else I do: I loved the character of Lee and this story,” McCarthy, 48, said at the Whitby Hotel.

In the late 1980s, Israel fought hard times first by selling stolen celebrity letters and then, for a bigger haul, by forging them. Eventually the FBI caught on.

“I didn’t know her story. And it bothered me that I didn’t,” McCarthy said. “What attracted me was first, it’s a fascinating story. You don’t expect that type of person to end up with the FBI after them. It’s not that she’s smuggling drugs. It is for literary forgery.

“I know it is a crime. She’s grifting people, for sure.”

Yet McCarthy understood both Israel’s desperation and her resourcefulness. “Lee was an incredible writer. That’s the only thing she did, but she was a woman of a certain age. She wasn’t adaptable. She had no flexibility to go out and just get a different job.

“Go on an interview and charm someone? That was not going to happen. I just kept thinking, What would any of us do, if you’ve lost your one means to survive?

“She was on welfare at one point. She was going to lose her apartment, she was going to be homeless. It’s not like she had a bunch of friends that were going to take her in. What would any of us do?”

Israel, a curmudgeon, loved her cat but not people. The notoriously likable McCarthy embraced that challenge.

“Energy-wise and socialwise, Lee’s very different from me. It’s fist forward for her. But it’s funny, I kind of see similarities of shove first, before you’re shoved.

“Certainly, the inward quality of Lee was fascinating — and fascinating to play. Instead of always verbally responding, Lee would probably just sit and watch and wait, probably for the person to leave.

“It was interesting to change that pacing and timing and just direct it inwards and wait someone out.”

As for the Oscar buzz that she’ll be a best actress nominee come January?

“That’s bananas!”

FASCINATED: Melissa McCarthy enjoyed the challenge of playing Lee Israel, whose personality was very different from hers.

JOHN PHILLIPS / GETTY IMAGES EUROPE SHINING STAR: Melissa McCarthy attends the U.K. premiere of ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ during this month’s London Film Festival.