Although 2011’s Bridesmaids crushed the summer box office, reminded Hollywood that women are funny, and earned its writers, Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, an Oscar nomination—a rare achievement for a comedy—Mumolo had some difficulty finding her professional footing after her first major Hollywood success.

“I was basically told, ‘No one knows what the value of your contribution was to this movie, so you need to write something alone,’” Mumolo told us, during a recent lunch in Burbank. The Irvine, California, native, who first teamed up with Wiig during their years at the Los Angeles improv company the Groundlings, was offered assorted re-writing gigs for projects studios hoped Mumolo could make “the next Bridesmaids.”

But Mumolo, a newcomer to the Hollywood big leagues, confesses, “I didn’t even know what that meant at that point.” She adds modestly, “I also didn’t have enough screenwriting experience, frankly, to be able to fix people’s scripts.” Even with the Oscar nomination, Mumolo says, “I just didn’t feel confident enough or comfortable enough taking that on.”

Mumolo was also exhausted—she had two children throughout the long, arduous process of bringing Bridesmaids to the screen. (Mumolo and Wiig sold the film to Universal while she was pregnant with her first child, Grace, and she delivered her second child, Vincent, several weeks after production finally wrapped.) The experience of long hours on set while heavily pregnant, followed by rounds of release and awards-season press, left her “disoriented” and “exhausted.”

“I wanted to take a break, even though I didn’t really have the money to be doing it,” Mumolo says. “Bridesmaids was my first job, and you don’t get paid much for first jobs.” Alas, her agent called with a project he thought would interest her—a film based on the incredible life story of Joy Mangano, the single mother turned Miracle Mop inventor. The project would allow Mumolo to write solo in a different genre. And after meeting the “magnetic” Mangano and hearing her inspiring story, Mumolo was hooked.

“She is a rare human being, and she glows when you meet her,” Mumolo says of Mangano. “She’s smart. She had many challenges and obstacles and a very difficult life and she made no excuses. She believed in herself and made something of herself with no help from anyone—with people around her trying to take from her and discouraging her on a daily basis, she persevered.”

Mumolo devoted nearly two years to the project. But when it came time for the studio to find a director, David O. Russell expressed interest in taking over the creative helm and brought his Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook muse Jennifer Lawrence with him to star.

Russell, who writes most of his own films, had an entirely different direction in mind for the project. And although Mumolo was given an executive-producer and story credit, she says, “I was not involved in any way in the movie going forward.” She did not even attend the premiere.

“It was painful, but I also understand how this business works,” Mumolo says. “It toughened me up in a huge way and I am the wiser from the experience.”

Fortunately, Mumolo had plenty of distractions—raising two kids in Burbank and co-starring in a variety of projects, including NBC’s About a Boy, Transparent, The Boss, and Bad Moms. The last—an ensemble comedy, which, like Bridesmaids, features a cast of capable women, including Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, and Jada Pinkett Smith—premieres in theaters this Friday.