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KATE MCKINNON, KRISTEN WIIG, MELISSA MCCARTHY AND LESLIE JONES ARE THIS SUMMER’S SUPERNATURAL SQUELCHERS
It's summer, it's hot as Hades and the Big Apple is once again stinking rotten with ghosts. The decades after the original Ghostbusters rode to the rescue of poltergeist-plagued New Yorkers in 1984, a new spook squad is on the job- and the big screen- in the Ghostbusters reboot, opening July 15.
The new movie puts an allfemale spin on the ’80s premise with a comedic cast led by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Saturday Night Live co-stars Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. They’re joined by Chris Hemsworth—as a hilarious “himbo” receptionist—and original Ghostbusters stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts.
“When I decided to do this, what swayed me was the idea that I could do it with funny women,” says director Paul Feig, who struck comic gold with Wiig and McCarthy in Bridesmaids and teamed up with McCarthy again for The Heat and Spy.
Comedic chemistry
Feig started with relative newcomer McKinnon, 32, who is best known to audiences for her spot-on impression of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on SNL. “I’d heard an interview where Kate said one of her dreams in life was to be a Ghostbuster,” Feig says. “Her natural energy is so funny. She’s such a lovely, funny weirdo.”
McKinnon’s wry, deadpan delivery was a perfect fit for her character, a MacGyveresque particle physicist who
crafts a clever solution for every challenge. Jones, 48, predicts audiences will be charmed by McKinnon. “She’s the one you watch and say, ‘I want to be her friend,’” she says admiringly.
McCarthy thinks audiences will love Jones too, as a Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker who joins the team. “She’s a runaway train with no apologies and the softest, chewiest center,” says her co-star.
Feig says that Wiig, 42, has a “comedic energy . . . on the razor’s edge of holding it together, in a funny way” that was perfect for her character. She plays a university professor embarrassed by her past as a researcher of the paranormal who has parted ways with her nerdy friend and former research partner, played by McCarthy.
Like their characters, McCarthy and Wiig are longtime real-life pals. They both started out around the same time at the Groundlings, the legendary improv-comedy theater in Los Angeles. That friendship is at the heart of the movie, says McCarthy, 45. “That and sticking to your beliefs and not worrying about what other people think of you, which I think everybody could use a little more of.”
Ghostly goo
The women all admit that making Ghostbusters, mostly shot in and around Boston, was great fun. But getting “slimed”—sprayed, splashed and drenched in green goo— was not. “At first, they were all, ‘When are we getting slimed?’” Feig recalls of the supernatural ectoplasm that takes on a life of its own. “I warned them that it wouldn’t be fun.”
“When I first read the script,
I thought, That’s such a funny
running joke,” says Wiig, whose character is a favorite target of the ghostly gloop. She quickly changed her mind. “It’s not something you shower off. In fact, water activates it. So whenever you shower for the next three days, you still kind of feel it.”
McCarthy tried to find out what the slime was made of. “No one would answer that question,” she says. “It was always a bunch of people in masks saying, ‘Oh, it’s perfectly safe.’ Well, I didn’t even ask if it was
safe, I asked what it was. They’re in hazmat gear and Kristen’s getting it blown in her face.”
“I know one of the major ingredients is tapioca flour,” Feig says. “My tech guys were like, ‘You can eat it!’ ”
Not that anyone was inclined to do that.
“It’s still living somewhere, bubbling under the sewers,” Wiig says ominously.
“It’s alive in Boston, for sure,” says McCarthy. “It’ll be its own movie.”
Wired for action
Some scenes called for tricky stunts that required flying around in harnesses, with special effects put in around the actresses later.
Flying involved the very real risk of kerbanging into someone else. “It’s not just CGI ghosts flying around,” says Wiig. “It’s stunt people on stilts and wires. A lot of those ghosts are real people.”
“We all loved to see how hard we could push ourselves,” says McCarthy, who had the reputation for being game to try anything. “Melissa’s always the one who wants to do the most dangerous stunts,” says Feig. “I have to sidle up to her and say, ‘You know, you could kill yourself.’ But that’s what I love about this cast. You see how much they embrace it, how much they want to do, and you’re like, why aren’t more women being given these roles?”
'I can do anything'
McCarthy hopes that’s a question her own daughters, Vivian, 9, and Georgie, 6, never need to ask and predicts they’ll find the fact that this film’s Ghostbusters are women totally unremarkable.
“That’s the thing I’m probably proudest of: that they wouldn’t think, Oh, they’re women! They’d just think, They’re scientists and they’re
fighting ghosts,” says McCarthy. “We just had a discussion that there’s never been a female president. And both of my girls were like, ‘That’s crazy! That can’t be true!’ And I’m like, ‘Nope, there has never been a female president, and Barack Obama is the first AfricanAmerican president.’They didn’t get it.
“I like the thought of them going to this movie and thinking, Of course, I can do anything! ”