In The Boss, Kristen Bell portrays Claire, a single mom who has toiled for several years as she works as the assistant to Michelle Darnell (played by the always hysterical Melissa McCarthy). When Darnell gets sent to jail for insider trading, when she gets out, she has nowhere to turn, except to her former assistant – who is less than thrilled to see her.
Yet, feeling bad for her former boss, she takes her in… to the delight of her ‘tween daughter. Broke and completely out of options, Michelle spends days on end laying on Claire’s coach and not being such a solid role model for Claire’s little girl. Then, Claire begs Michelle to get it together and encourages her to take her daughter to her Girl Scouts-like troupe meeting. Lightning strikes and Michelle has a million dollar idea… start her own girl group, recruit a number of misfit kids and sell Claire’s brownies which are just this side of manna.
When we caught up with Bell at the press day for The Boss, the actress reported that this storyline hit a little close to home. “I was a Brownie for a couple of years. I love the Brownies! I mean, it was called the Brownies, so it was appealing,” Bell said.
The Frozen star believes that her childhood experience with that youth group was just what she needed and so too could the millions of young girls who enjoy Girl Scouts, Brownies or whatever group that supports personal growth of our youth.
“I was too small to play a lot of sports. It was a perfect after-school activity. There are certain times when separating boys and girls is really healthy because it creates a safer environment — especially in early-adolescence. They can be very healthy experiences.”
In The Boss, Claire gets to work making those brownies and sure enough, the sales start to pile up. Bell herself, tried her best to avoid the sweet tweets on the set. “They were appealing for the first seven days,” Bell said and laughed.
“I tried one and they were delicious. And then by month two, when we were using the same tray of refrigerated brownies, I was over it. It was a brownie overdose.”
Bell is no stranger to comedy, in fact she knows her sweet spot when it comes to her place in the comedic wheelhouse. “You always need a straight man. I’m still a part of the joke being the straight man. I don’t necessarily distinguish one from the other. I enjoy being the straight-man particularly against Melissa because she is such a comedic genius,” Bell said.
“My energetic weirdo isn’t as funny as Melissa’s energetic weirdo. In comedy, you need certain things for the recipe to work. You can’t have perfection because comedy is in the imperfection and the faults.”
One of the hardest scenes to get through for Bell in The Boss was one that involved McCarthy having a device in her mouth that allowed Bell’s character to whiten Michelle’s teeth. “I don’t know how her face didn’t go numb. I had to attempt to say my lines three inches from her face. It’s just such a funny thing to stare at the inside of someone’s mouth and down their throat,” Bell said. Hilarity ensued repeatedly on that day! “When she would improv in that scene, I wouldn’t know what she was saying because it was so mangled.”