Judd Apatow’s Wife Opened His Eyes to Female-Lead Scripts

Judd Apatow has recently branched out from his usually male-focused comedies to take on more female orientated work – the cause? His wife Leslie Mann who regularly stars in his films. Judd recently worked on the hit film ‘Bridesmaids’ and TV show ‘Girls’ because Leslie informed him of how bad scripts usually are for women comedians. He noticed what she meant as soon as he started to read and quickly got to work on some female-lead work:

‘There aren’t any good roles for women, the female parts aren’t developed, the women are serving the men.’ And just seeing the stack of scripts showed me how little effort was put into making great female characters. If Leslie didn’t mention it, I don’t know if I would’ve ever thought about it. But when you notice it, you get ashamed. When you’re reading other people’s scripts, your friends’ scripts and seeing your friends’ movies, suddenly it sticks out: Oh my God, what were they having the poor actress do?”

Leslie says that Judd makes his decisions for himself and that she doesn’t really influence him – she thinks women are usually portrayed favorably in his films but he continues to get better at making roles for women that really stand out for their originality:

”He makes his own decisions. Women have always been well represented in his own movies and he’s doing better all the time.”