She also said her daughters played with wigs when they were younger, describing the experience with the enthusiasm of a parent discovering her children had inherited one of her favorite interests.
“My girls have been in wigs. Like they used to play with wigs,” McCarthy said. The actress even compared her excitement to the way a sports-loving father might feel watching his children take up the same passion. “I was like, ‘This is, I think this is what, like a Texas dad if his kids like a quarterback or whatever. I’m not sporty.’ I literally was like, ‘This is why I had children. This is beautiful.'”
From Improv Costumes to a Saturday Hair Dryer
McCarthy’s affection for wigs goes back even further than her family life and movie career. In a 2008 TV Guide interview, she revealed that she personally had “like, 100 wigs.” When asked why she needed so many, McCarthy explained that they were connected to her work with The Groundlings, where she wore them onstage during improv performances.
She described the collection as mostly intentionally terrible-looking wigs, including bad short perms, mullets and hairstyles resembling those worn by older Midwestern women. The collection may have changed over the years, but the fascination clearly never disappeared.
In fact, McCarthy once recalled losing one of her wigs while filming Tammy — and it was not an inexpensive loss. During the Bullseye interview, she said the wig that disappeared into Wilmington Lake had cost $5,000 to $6,000.
The mishap happened during a safety test run for a jet ski, when McCarthy flipped herself off at about 40 miles per hour. She explained that the wig had been secured with roughly 30 or 40 pins, yet the impact still ripped it away.
