In an upcoming film, McCarthy will play a female cop, but in a setting very far removed from the comedic silliness of Spy or The Heat. Variety reports that McCarthy and Ben Falcone are set to produce a film about Boston’s first female cops in the ’70s, based on a book proposal.
The description reads:
“Alexandra Lydon (who will also exec produce) penned the book which sold preemptively to Picador USA and tells the true story of the first female police officers in Boston. The book follows the transition of black and white women joining the Boston Police Department, as they find themselves on the front lines of a racially divided city and became unwitting participants in a social revolution.”
Lydon comes from a family of cops in Dorchester. Melissa McCarthy is an excellent comedic actor, and it’ll be interesting to see her dive into more dramatic works. While still very early in the works, I hope the team will prioritize having consultants and historians on the project. There aren’t a lot of details about what the film will specifically address, but female officers in Boston were first issued uniforms and guns in 1972. We may speculate then, that we’ll be seeing a representation of the desegregation of Boston public schools which begins in 1974, the busing crisis, and riots.
It’s a dense and complex history deserves a thoughtful and accurate look, as well as sensitive consideration about how anti-police sentiment was both then and now. For a deeper dive, this piece from The Atlantic is an excellent dive into how relevant this history still is and how it needs to reckoned with. That’s a lot for one film to take on, but if McCarthy and her team pull it off, it could be amazing.
(via Women and Hollywood, image: 20th Century Fox)
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