Melissa McCarthy Doesn't Remember 'Bridesmaids'

To those who knew Melissa McCarthy only as the sweet, kindhearted Sookie St. James on Gilmore Girls, watching her Bridesmaids character talk about the perils of food poisoning and climbing people "like a tree" came as a bit of a surprise — and apparently, not only to us. In an interview with Variety on Tuesday, McCarthy said that she doesn't remember some of her dirtiest Bridesmaids lines, including the now-famous scene in which her character talks to an undercover air marshal (her real-life husband, Ben Falcone) about the places on one's body in which a gun could feasibly be hidden.

“I think I kept it very vague,” McCarthy said. “When I watch that stuff, I’m like ‘Omigod!’ When did I say that?’ I don’t remember it.”

Added Falcone, "you black it out to protect yourself."

And, apparently, Bridesmaids isn't the only movie the actress doesn't remember all too clearly, as in her Rolling Stone cover story, McCarthy revealed that she also blacked out some of her raunchiest lines from This is 40 , including that hilarious, curse-filled tirade that aired during the movie's end credits.

"When I saw that scene, I really truly didn't remember saying most of it," she said.

One would think that telling Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann that you'd "like to rear up and jackknife my legs and kick you both in the f*****g jaw with my foot bone" would be something you wouldn't forget, but hey, every actor has their own process. McCarthy also said that she's slipped into one of these "fugue states" during auditions, too, such as when, trying out for Bridesmaids, she found herself suddenly rambling about dolphin sex.

"There's not one thing you could have done to seem any stranger," she recalled saying to herself afterwards. "Sex with a dolphin? Handplay with a dolphin! You just could not have been any weirder."

As unsettling as those blackouts must be for McCarthy, they clearly work; those Bridesmaids and This is 40 lines made for some of those movies' funniest moments, and solidified the actress as a queen of improv comedy, especially humor on the R-rated side. We have to wonder, though — what else has she blacked out? Searching for the police captain's balls in The Heat? Kissing Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover 3? The entirety of Identity Thief? (On that one, we can only hope.) It's a strange idea, that the moments that most endeared us to McCarthy are the ones she can't remember. She might know she's loved, but she also might have no idea why.

Hopefully, she hasn't blacked out her lines in Tammy, because even just from the trailers, the upcoming film looks like it could be McCarthy's funniest movie since Bridesmaids. We'd hate for the actress not to have experienced its creation, especially because if it's anything like her last few movies, fans will likely quote her craziest lines right back to her; it's a nice gesture no matter what, but it'd probably be a lot better if McCarthy had a clue what they were talking about.

Although she may not remember her greatest lines, we can't get them out of our memories. Her famous Bridesmaids plane scene:

And that amazing This is 40 tirade: