Melissa McCarthy wasn't always the boss.
Growing up on a corn and soybean farm in Illinois, McCarthy had to make her own fun in her early childhood. The actress sat down with Howard Stern on Monday to promote her new film "The Boss" and ended up discussing how the time she spent alone as a child informed her comedy roots.
"I was bored. I had no neighbors, I had no kids to play with. So I'd be, like, running around the barn pretending I was a detective or something," she said on "The Howard Stern Show." "I had tons of friends but no one lived around me."
Back in 2013, the actress spoke to Michigan Avenue magazine about how the bucolic setting served as the breeding ground for the boundary-pushing, no-holds-barred performances we've come to expect from her onscreen.
"I was kind of a handful, I think -- pretty energetic," she said. "I would run around the farm, climb up into things I wasn’t supposed to, and get up into the rafters in the barn. I went up into the silo once when I was really tiny, and the farmer had to come and get me down. It was an amazing way to grow up."
But once she left Illinois for New York City, initially intending to start a career in fashion, McCarthy immediately gravitated toward the comedy scene.
The now-famous shoe designer and close friend to McCarthy Brian Atwood was the catalyst for the actress' comic career, urging her to go to an open mic night almost immediately after her arrival.
"The second night [Atwood] goes, 'You're gonna do stand-up,'" she told Stern. "Once I got up there, I just started telling weird, long self-involved stories."
And the rest is Hollywood history.
Head over to "The Howard Stern Show" to hear more from McCarthy's interview.
Before You Go
