Photo : Pascal Le Segretain ( Getty Images )

Can You Ever Forgive Me? was one of our favorite movies of 2018, and we were especially taken with the “career-best performance” delivered by star Melissa McCarthy. The film, a biopic of sorts, follows biographer Lee Israel’s dive into forgery in the early ‘90s, and it almost looked a lot different. Before Marielle Heller took the reins, director Nicole Holofcener, who wrote the screenplay, was slated to direct with Julianne Moore in the lead role. That version fell apart due to “creative differences,” the likes of which Moore detailed in a new interview on Watch What Happens Live.


“I didn’t leave that movie, I was fired,” the Oscar winner said. “Yeah, yeah, Nicole fired me.”

Moore says they were in rehearsals during preproduction for the film when things fell apart. “I think she didn’t like what I was doing,” Moore said of Holofcener. “I think that her idea of where the character was was different from my idea of where the character was, and so she fired me.” In an interview with Indiewire, she added that she “didn’t want to leave.” Noting that it’s “still kind of painful,” Moore told Watch What Happens Live that she still hasn’t seen McCarthy’s turn.


She’s plenty busy now, however, currently starring in Sebastián Lelio’s lovely Gloria Bell.

Watch her interview below.