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Kristen Wiig and Paul Feig

It seems almost counterintuitive to put a male director at the helm of a film by, about and for women. But Paul Feig’s pedigree as a sensitive purveyor of stories friendly to both genders goes back more than a decade, when he helped the cult TV show “Freaks and Geeks” become a critical darling thanks to its delicate balance of focus between the antics of an oddball teenager named Sam and his savvier but no less sympathetic older sister Lindsay. And after a spate of smaller films, he deservedly graduates to the ranks of his A-list producer Judd Apatow with “Bridesmaids,” a comedy about an out of work thirtysomething named Annie (Kristen Wiig) who finds her bond with longtime friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) tested when she’s asked to be her maid of honor. Speakeasy sat down with Feig to discuss “Bridesmaids.”

Because so many big female-driven comedies can be watered-down versions of male ones, how careful did you have to be to make sure that it wasn’t going to be a really funny girl version of “40-Year-Old Virgin”?

What it just adds up to is they’re women talking like women and we’re not grafting anything on them other than potential story points or moments. Early on with Kristen and Annie and there were other women, we checked to make sure those story points were honest – what would be your honest reaction to this? And so it just kept us honest the whole time. I honestly don’t see how you can do it any other way if you’re working with a member of the opposite sex. Because I’m a pretty feminized geek, you know? I have that point of view, I grew up around a lot of girls, so I’m pretty sensitive to that. But I don’t dare say “I know how women think.”

You also capture this great relationship between Kristen and Maya, particularly in the diner scene. How tough was it to make that conversation so well-rounded where Maya’s supporting her, but being honest at the same time?

I mean the genesis of that scene other than wanting to show that they’re best friends was to show that Lillian is the only person in Annie’s life who both calls her on stuff but supports her, so that you immediately see this is the one friend she can’t lose.

What sort of work did you have to do to make sure that Kristen’s natural instincts as a comedian didn’t make her character too sort of unrealistically comical?

Sketchy, yeah. Well, the irony is she actually came into this wanting to play it very grounded to the point where I felt like I wanted to showcase her comedy a little bit more. Because the first draft they wrote of the script was really a good draft, but it had her a little more reactive – she had very funny people around her and was very kind of grounded in her journey. And it was like, I want both because I’ve seen her in movies and she’s always fantastic. But I’ve seen her movies where she’s not funny at all, she plays it pretty straight, and I’m always kind of like oh shoot, I want to see Kristen be funny too.

How fine a line did you have to walk in the food-poisoning scene, to give it the oomph it needs but not lose the audience, especially females who are less responsive to scatological humor?

It’s just arming yourself so that when you get in the editing room you have enough. And then it’s just being smart enough and classy enough, if you will, to not go too far. But that’s where the test screening process helps so immeasurably because, you know, let’s put up the one that has too much in it. Let’s put up the one that doesn’t have enough. Then you hear like okay, I think they so want to laugh. Now okay, now we just grossed them out and it’s too much. And then that’s how we kind of worked it to the final part that I think works pretty tightly. I would never deign to go into a scene like that saying like here’s the script, it’s these exact dates, this is what’s going to be, and I guarantee you it’s going to work. I would be an idiot if I were to say that, as would anybody, because you just don’t know with an audience.

Judd’s films have sort of codified the way that modern comedies focus less on a discernible plot than a sort of set pieces that connect together. How do you make sure that everything fits together?

What you never want to do is have a story that doesn’t track emotionally, because then you’re going joke to joke and you’re going to fatigue the audience. The only thing that’s going to string them to the next joke is how successful the previous joke is. And you can never have a thousand percent batting average on jokes – it’s just never going to happen. But if you’re invested in that character they’ll go through the fire with them, and then the jokes are just this added thing about oh good, I care, and it’s coming out of the character.

How much do you encourage the actors to step outside of scenes to look for their own, or what they think their character’s natural reaction might be? So many of these comedies frequently observe or acknowledge the circumstances a character finds him or herself in, and that seems more improvisational than carefully written.

I’m a big believer that if you have very real characters and actors playing the characters in a very real way where they are the person and they’re not commenting on the person, then you can put them in the craziest situations. Because then it’s just like for you and I, suddenly if a spaceship came down and we got sucked into an alien spaceship, you and I would react the way that we react to things around here. And the problem is when you do things and these people are acting like crazy people, and you’re like okay, what reality am I in? But if people are reacting in a believable way you can kind of take an audience anywhere.

For more go to Director Paul Feig on Balancing Gross Gags and Sentimental Scenes