Melissa Leo was almost too busy to attend the Ghetto Film School event last night at the Standard, but since it was honoring her The Fighter director David O. Russell, Leo managed to get some time off the Westchester set of Predisposed, where she’s starring with Jesse Eisenberg and Tracy Morgan. According to Leo, Morgan has spent the last several days on set reeling from the blowback to his homophobic stand-up routine, which he’s since apologized for. “I witnessed Tracy very upset by being misunderstood, and the best comfort to him seemed to be that comedy is the most difficult [skill] of what we do,” said Leo. “And comedy in the theatrical arts presses boundaries and asks questions and puts things in people’s faces. The cat I’m working with up the river is a very fine man with the best intentions. And yeah, he likes to push an envelope, without a doubt.” If she sounds sympathetic, said Leo, it’s because her Oscar acceptance speech taught her what it’s like to say something blue you later regret: “Golly, I’ll live the rest of my life with a four-letter cuss word that we all use, in a moment that was beyond my wildest dreams, so there you go.”
