Was anyone at the Oscars having more fun than Melissa McCarthy?

The actress was part of the night’s most hilarious bit, in which she and Brian Tyree Henry presented the award for Best Costume in overblown parodies of the outfits from The Favourite, complete with 17 stuffed rabbits. 

McCarthy was also seated in the auditorium next to her Can You Ever Forgive Me co-star Richard E Grant, so you know the pair of them were giggling together the whole evening. 

The two best gifs of the night were of McCarthy: one of her face basking in the reflected delight of Grant clapping eyes on his longterm crush Barbra Streisand. And the second was her genuine shock when Olivia Colman’s name was announced as the winner of her category. 

While fellow nominees Yalitza Aparicio and Lady Gaga nodded politely, and category favourite Glenn Close grinned painfully, McCarthy reeled back in surprise before applauding gleefully for Colman. We’re going to keep the ensuing gif in our arsenal for whenever someone lobs something truly shocking into our WhatsApp group chat.

All this to say: Melissa McCarthy had fun at the Oscars! As she most definitely should. And the fun only continued at the after party, when the actress changed out of her custom Brandon Maxwell jumpsuit – itself a huge power move – and into an adidas tracksuit. 

It was all McCarthy’s idea according to her husband Ben Falcone, who also turned up to the Vanity Fair Oscars Party in a matching tracksuit.

“We broke into an adidas store,” McCarthy joked. “This was the point where we want to have fun and we were going to make [outfit] changes and I was like, or we could change into matching tracksuits and add diamonds and call it a day.”

That’s right, McCarthy added extra diamonds to her look. She kept the Forever Mark bling that she was wearing on the Oscars red carpet and, ignoring Coco Chanel’s inimitable advice, she put on even more pieces before going to the after party.

“I’m not kidding around,” McCarthy joked. “I took what I was wearing to the Oscars and I doubled it.” Two rings, three necklaces, two bracelets and one pair of chunky diamond-studded hoop earrings. “I wouldn’t trust me with it,” she said.

“It’s not [less glamorous] to me guys,” she added. “I’ve doubled my diamonds. I feel great.” 

This is the outfit of a woman who knows. She knows that after spending a whole evening trussed up in a red carpet outfit, with your spanx digging so far into your body that they begin to enter, as Amy Poehler joked at the Oscars, your Spider-Verse, the only thing you want in life is to slip into something a little bit more comfortable.

Everyone else at the Vanity Fair Oscars after party had the wrong idea. There there were, gussied up and cantilevered into some ridiculous red carpet contraption, knowing that they couldn’t go near the burger truck for fear of dripping sauce all over their borrowed gowns and that they wouldn’t be able to even begin to entertain the possibility of dropping it low on the dance floor.

Not McCarthy. In her tracksuit the actress danced the night away with a glass of whiskey near-permanently in hand. She was the living embodiment of one of her own films: Life of the Party. 

This is some powerful 2019 energy. This is a true mood. This is the way we are going to approach getting ready for every fancy party we are invited to from now on – with a ballgown for the main event and then something comfy and fun for later.

As Oprah once famously said of Gayle King: Melissa McCarthy is the mother we never had. The sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. We don’t know a better person. We don’t know a better person!

Images: Getty