The Truth About Melissa McCarthy's 99-Cent Store Shopping Sprees That Are Allegedly 'Tearing Her Family Apart'

Melissa McCarthy laughed off tabloid reports that her bargain shopping was "tearing my family apart" in PEOPLE's cover story

Melissa McCarthy has no shame in her game.

The actress, 47, laughed off tabloid reports that her bargain shopping was “tearing my family apart” after she was photographed leaving a 99-cent store earlier this year.

“First of all, I love me a 99-cent store,” McCarthy says in PEOPLE’s latest cover story, on stands Friday.

So what was she buying exactly? Turns out, the shopping trip was an effort to help save her kitchenware from her daughters’ love of making homemade slime.

Cliff Watts

The actress says that Vivian, 11, and Georgette, 8, have taken over all her leftover containers to make the kid-beloved substance.

“I’d go to put away the leftovers, and there’d be nothing in the cabinets because all 30 containers were used for slime,” she says. “So I went to one, and I was just straight-arming entire shelves of containers into my cart—anything that had a lid, I bought. I walked out with bags and bags of cheap plastic containers for my girls’ slime.”

A photographer caught McCarthy outside the store with her haul and a tabloid ran with the headline about her supposed spending habit, which McCarthy laughs off in a recent appearance on The Late Late Show with host James Corden.

“I have 45 to 70 containers of slime all over the house. Just open bowls, ziploc bags sitting there. And it’s like — that’s what’s tearing our family apart,” she jokes.