Melissa McCarthy and co-writer/co-director/co-marriage person Ben Falcone might not have scored their dream casting core of Shirley MacLaine for road-trip comedy Tammy. But they’re gathering a perfectly great ensemble as it is, with Susan Sarandon and Mark Duplass already aboard alongside McCarthy. Allison Janney is now in talks to join them.
Falcone and McCarthy are looking to kick off directing next month, working from their script. The plot finds McCarthy as a woman who loses her job and discovers her husband has been having an affair on the same day. Seeking a little solace from her troubles, she hits the road with her hard-drinking, foul-mouthed grandmother (Sarandon, according to Variety’s report, though earlier stories have had her listed as a lesbian pal of the grandma). Along the way our heroine meets and hangs out with a weird guy (Duplass).
Janney, last seen in Liberal Arts and A Thousand Words, is in talks to play McCarthy’s mother. She and her representatives are figuring out if she can squeeze filming Tammy around other commitments, including Mark Lawrence’s latest Hugh Grant comedy and Showtime series Masters Of Sex. She’s already worked on The Way, Way Back, Touchy Feely and Jason Bateman’s spelling bee comedy Bad Words.