Kia Niro Hero Melissa McCarthy Is A Thief In New Movie

Melissa McCarthy, cropped photo: Mingle MediaTV [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Melissa McCarthy is known as a comedic actress (Ghostbusters, Bridesmaids). And not just on the big screen. She’s currently starring in a TV commercial for the Kia Niro. (Watch for it during the Super Bowl.) In each spot McCarthy’s asked to help save the environment in one way or another (save the whales, trees, ice caps, rhinos) and she fails hilariously in each. The voiceover says: “It’s hard to be an eco-warrior, but it’s easy to drive like one.”

[Lee Israel confessed to forgeries but doesn’t reveal much remorse in her memoir ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me‘?]

But McCarthy’s next big role isn’t slapstick. She’s currently filming the dark comedy Can You Ever Forgive Me? which is the title of celebrity biographer Lee Israel’s 2008 memoir. McCarthy plays Israel who, when her writing career had hit a dead end, started to forge letters from dead writers and actors including Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, and Nöel Coward. She stole letters from archives and libraries (Columbia University), forged them and sold both forged and stolen letters (more than 400). She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property in 1993 and served six months under house arrest. Israel died in 2014 at the age of 74. Can You Ever Forgive Me will be in theaters 2018.