'Bridesmaids' Director Paul Feig Is Hosting a Movie Night For COVID-19 Brides

From Woman's Day

Among the many people affect by the COVID-19 pandemic are the thousands of brides and grooms who had to postpone or, in some cases, cancel the weddings they've worked so hard and spent so much to plan. But director Paul Feig is hoping to offer a small condolence to disappointed brides by live-streaming his hilarious and adored movie, Bridesmaids, with brides and bridesmaids around the country.

"We were realizing how many people didn’t get to have their weddings, or if they had the weddings they weren’t the weddings they wanted, and how everything got put on hold," Feig tells Woman's Day. "Being in showbiz, the only real skill I have is to try to entertain people, and watching Bridesmaids together felt like an interactive way where I can talk to people and lighten things up."

In addition to watching the movie, Feig, who just launched the gin brand Artingstall's and is the dapper, pun-making host of Quarantine Cocktail Time on his Instagram, will show attendees how to make a variety of Bridesmaids-inspired cocktails and share some behind-the-scenes gossip from the making of the movie.

One secret even diehard fans may not know is that, in making the movie, Feig says getting a female-led cast to tell a story of female friendship "in a really fun but emotionally effective way" was harder than you might think.

"I’d been trying to do female-driven projects for years, and Hollywood always said 'You can’t because they won’t sell internationally,'" Feig says. "They had a ton of BS reasons. I even had people saying 'Get ready, that set’s gonna be crazy, all those women will be fighting and stuff,' and I was like 'What?'"

Of course, when he was able to get the project off the ground, his experience was completely different than what he'd been "warned" about. "I get there and it’s the most supportive set I’ve ever been on," Feig says. "Every day was just so many laughs, and what I loved was just eves dropping on them when they’d be sitting off to the side because they’d be making each other laugh and doing imitations and making funny songs and voices and I’d be like 'Let’s do that in a scene because it's so funny.' There was this flow from behind the camera to in front of the camera, and it loosened them up and allowed them to showcase themselves. We knew something special was happening, but we didn’t know it would be commercially successful."

The free Bridesmaids livestream will take place on Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. EST, and although it's especially applicable for brides or a bridesmaids, anyone who loves the 2011 comedy can join. And the more people who join in the better, since Artingstall’s will donate $1 for each viewer to Family Promise, an organization that helps families who are experiencing homelessness. So get your cocktail supplies ready, queue up the movie, and repeat one of main-character Annie's best lines: "I'm ready to PAAAAAAAAARTY!"

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