Christina Applegate and Annie Mumolo Talk Spanx, Free-balling, and the Pressure to Be Perfect
“My femoral artery is being choked,” Christina Applegate quips as she tugs at her Spanx and sits down on a couch in the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. The Bad Moms actress, along with co-star Annie Mumolo (who famously wrote Bridesmaids a few years back), is not pleased about being forced to dress up for today’s press junket.
“Spanx is, like, my No. 1 subject,” Mumolo says, sympathizing. “What kind, what length, what do you wear it underneath?”
Neither actress, both of whom are moms themselves, spend much time getting glammed up these days. Today is an exception tfor the movie, out July 29, and its promotion. Applegate — who plays the film’s antagonist, Gwendolyn, a perfect, controlling mom who makes everyone’s life hell throughout the film — even admits to regularly dropping her kid off at school in sweats.
“We kind of roll in dirty,” Applegate says. “We’re rolling dirty. My hair’s in my mom bun and it’s been in there six or seven days without a wash. I’m in sweatpants. I think the employees at the school at first were like, ‘Hmm, she doesn’t take very good care of herself.’ Because then if one time I did shower and put lipstick on everyone would be like, ‘My goodness! You did your face up today.’ But I think I felt judged because I was judging myself, like, ‘I’m in public and I look like a bridge troll.’”
“I was dropping my kids off in April and suddenly realized, ‘I’m not wearing a bra,’” adds Mumolo, who plays Gwendolyn’s hilariously timid cohort, Vicky. “I did not put on a bra. I was bouncing around, free-balling. But it’s really hard in the mornings. I might not have my bra on, but if everybody’s in the classroom then we’re good.”
Bad Moms, which also stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn, centers on this feeling of moms judging other moms. Applegate’s character is quick to take a hard stance on everything involving parenthood, much to the dismay of the parents around her. Eventually, some of the moms protest and start partying, drinking, and acting apathetic as a means of liberation. It’s a raucous, hilarious story that reveals that onscreen moms can be just as funny and crass as the guys.
“Being a mom is hilarious all day long,” Applegate says of why motherhood seems so ripe for comedy. “In all of its tragedy, it’s seriously hilarious. The things that happen; the things your children do all day. It’s obnoxious how many videos I have of my child doing ridiculous things and saying ridiculous things. Or crying because she’s a vegetarian and no one in her class is a vegetarian. She doesn’t want to be the only vegetarian. She’ll be hysterically crying, and I’m secretly filming her in the car.”
Of course, the Gwendolyn character is a bit extreme, and Applegate says that her kid’s “very granola” school doesn’t have to contest with such controlling parents. “Each one of these moms [in the movie] is like a stereotype,” Applegate explains. “I think we all have a little bit of these moms in us. I’ve come across mothers in my life who have these qualities. I don’t know if I’ve met these exact people. I’ve obviously never met someone as evil as Gwendolyn in my life — I’ve never come across it.”
Mumolo isn’t so sure. “I’ve met a few Gwendolyns,” she laughs. “One of them was the inspiration for the Helen character in Bridesmaids. And then one of them is another person who is even worse. But in Bridesmaids, when I wrote the character, the producer — Judd Apatow — said, ‘No one is going to believe this, it’s so extreme.’ And I was like, ‘It’s real.’ We ended up pulling it back because the person I know in real life is a monster.”
Applegate and Mumolo don’t just contend with judgment from their fellow moms. Both deal with scrutiny about their appearance from the media and online fans on a nearly constant basis. Dressing up for a red carpet or a press junket — or anything that will be highly photographed — has lost some of its fun because there is so much pressure to look perfect.
“It’s very stressful,” Mumolo says. “When you’re on the red carpet you’re under a microscope. And then people go online and write, ‘Oh, look at her ankle.’ Or whatever it is. They’ll find things. There’s so much exposure to one photograph. It’s a very terrifying time for that. You’re very exposed in that sense. For me, when I am getting dressed to go do a red carpet thing, I am terrified.”
“They’ll write, ‘She looks old. She looks fat. She had surgery,’” Applegate adds. “It’s like, ‘F***!’ It’s so annoying. ‘Oh, she’s got the worst dress on the red carpet.’ Or ‘She didn’t do her nails.’ I don’t really care what anyone says about me — I couldn’t care less. But there’s this feeling of needing to put the best foot forward. I remember the days of being an actress and that was not part of it. I did my own hair and makeup for the Golden Globes and the Emmys — all the stuff back in the ’80s and early ’90s. And yes, you can go back and I look ridiculous. But no one said anything because no one cared. I was wearing my grandmother’s vintage velvet dresses from the ’20s and a pair of Doc Martens. I wore that, literally, to the Golden Globes.”
That sense of scrutiny has been amplified lately for women in Hollywood as several male journalists have penned articles saying Renee Zellweger looked old and Margot Robbie looked hot. The articles have completely ignored any personal or career merit and focused solely on the actresses’ looks.
“Don’t even get me started on that,” Applegate says. At 44, she’s reached the point where she refuses to indulge the photographers shouting on the red carpet because she doesn’t want to participate in the conversation about an aging appearance. “I have a go-to smirk on the red carpet now,” Applegate says. “I can’t even smile anymore because people are going to shame me because in this industry I should look a certain way and I haven’t had the surgery or the Botox and stuff. I’m letting nature take its course on all this.” She gestures to her face and body. “For now I’m trying to just let it be. But it’s scary. Everyone’s got a f***ing opinion these days, and they’ve all got a forum for it.”
Another realm of judgment the actresses have a lot to say about is the pressure on female-led comedies to succeed at the box office. After the dump of misogynistic comments about the new Ghostbusters film, there is a sense that an all-female comedy like Bad Moms has to prove its worth — something that Mumolo is deeply familiar with after her experience on Bridesmaids.
“If these movies fail, then it gets blamed on the women,” Applegate says. “Not maybe the possible month it came out or that there was a tragedy in the world and no one was going to theaters. It’ll always be, ‘See, female comedies just don’t work.’ But thank God for Annie and Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy and people who have proven that women are powerhouse comedians and can hold their own and can bring in insane box office as well.”
“I hate to make any grand statements about that because it’s difficult,” Mumolo says. “I can only speak from my own experience. But I did pitch a TV show that was in development and it had three women in it. There was another TV show with three women in it and it had just gotten canceled and they said, ‘Three women comedies aren’t working right now. We’re not doing three women comedies on TV right now.’ But I don’t consider when I write something that it’s a woman’s thing. I just consider it a thing and it’s something funny. Nobody was calling The Hangover a ‘male-dominated comedy.’”
“There are chicks in this movie,” Applegate adds. “But this movie can appeal to everybody. All the men we’ve spoken to have been surprised by how much they really enjoyed it and got emotionally attached and laughed. The comedy is done well. Yeah, there’s a lot of chicks. There’s two dudes in the movie. But it’s for anyone.”
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