Melissa McCarthy hopes "Can you forgive me? Encourages you to reach out to single people

The story of Lee Israel does not seem so heroic on paper. Biographer whose legitimate work was exhausting, the writer began to falsify letters that she attributed to legendary literary minds like Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward. Melissa McCarthy disappears in Can you ever forgive me?, and the film portrays the real woman and her glorious complexity in an empathic – but never compassionate – way that will push you to root.

It's a daunting challenge to authentically play someone who was notoriously difficult to know, even to his closest friends. (Israel died in 2014 at the age of 75.) But this left the film star with a keen understanding of loneliness facing Israel's stalemate and bravado. It's something that she hopes to see carried away by movie buffs.

"By passing people on the street, maybe you look at them differently or actually look he said looking at a rainy New York City from a downtown hotel room. "Sometimes, if you see someone and you know that it has been seen, it results in a cumulative effect, that they are not invisible."

In the movie, Lee hides in New York. She drinks alone in the same bar and peddles her goods in a series of filthy (and probably now missing) bookstores under cover of lies. She is a source of frustration for her agent and an insoluble problem for her ex-partner. But even without their say, she herself is resolutely and bravely herself.

"She did not need to think about how others saw her to decide who she was," says the actor. "Especially today, when there is so much in social media: you think about my holidays? What is it? you think of my family? Make you think I'm fine? … I think it's a very good reminder that you need to determine who you are from within, not the other way around. "

And while Lee may be the least social character McCarthy played, the actor feels a kinship with her. In fact, this is perhaps her most personal role, despite the fact that she usually tries to avoid this kind of thing.

"I really do not need or want to play a character very similar to myself, I feel very bad at ease, I do not know where to put my hands," she says with a laugh. "But as a character, the choices are final, I know exactly what they're going to say, I know how they move, how they talk, there's never any hesitation. I found it really interesting that Lee is doing exactly the same thing with his writing. "

The writer had reasons to be confident in the way she channeled these people. In her memoirs, she claimed to have written 400 fakes, many of which were deceiving collectors and experts. "She was a great writer and really, really funny," says McCarthy. "She could be anybody, as long as she can do it behind the veil, we have a very similar trajectory that way."

The actor's penchant for the woman expresses not only in the way she talks about her, but in the show itself. Her portrait does not soften and does not make fun of Lee, which she probably would have hated. But McCarthy thinks that if they had the chance to spend time together, they would have got along well … finally.

"I do not know, I think I would have bothered her, I'm too talkative. [But] I think I would have worn it out. There may be some Labrador in me, "she says with a smile," I always think that there is always a soft and fluffy center, even if someone does not want to. " talk, never want to show you. "

Knowing Lee through this project reminded McCarthy of the time she spent with her elders in her youth: first with her great-great-grandmother, then working in a retirement home. She admires "some older people because they do not care anymore, in the best way possible," she says. And Lee had this attitude – that she had no obligation to put someone at ease – all her life. "I had to do it so early, maybe that's why I find it so charming," she adds.

At the time of publication, Can you ever forgive me? 100 percent on rotten tomatoes, and McCarthy's performance is already generating buzz. But this recognition is the icing on the cake for the star.

"You're behind a movie because you say," Oh, I'd like people to know this story, "she says." With Lee, I feel so personally responsible and that people are like: "J & I felt something, I really like it "… for me, that's all."