Kate McKinnon
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
No, I'm in the offices of the publisher of the book that I'm here to promote.
These are fake glasses that I wear to feel more comfortable.
They provide a barrier between me and my interlocutors that I need in order to feel safe.
I can see you, but you can't come close to me.
Even though I have these glasses on to protect.
And the presence of the microphone in my mouth is also making it easier for me to speak in my most dulcet tones.
And she has lost her costume jewelry and she gets in trouble because it's her mother's costume jewelry.
I've just plotted my new series, so I am going to go because I'm inspired.
Have you ever lost something that you really weren't supposed to lose?
I feel like we have, you know, a lifelong fan.
Well, no, I, gosh, you know, what it was, okay, I was in a pageant at church, a play.
So, like, everyone is, like, just gray and of, like, Dutch descent.
And we were doing a play, Daniel and the Lion's Den.
And I believe I was playing Cyrus, King of Persia.
And I decided to do it in a British accent to make myself feel more comfortable.
And those Methodists, they got to kick it up.
Well, I know I was doing a British accent and they were laughing and I just always liked to do different voices other than my own because my own, you know, you're hearing it.
But there were always, you know, growing up in my family, everyone was doing voices.
Around the dinner table, you know, waking up, going to bed, just voices, voices, Long Island.
The big thing growing up, I mean, the microphones.
The big thing growing up was the Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco incident.
Joey Buttafuoco was my grandfather's auto mechanic.
It was Long Island to a T. Was your grandfather deposed?
He would have said, but we, it was just, you know, my friends and I, we would play that.
And I didn't realize at the time that Amy Fisher was being trafficked.
It was, you know, yeah, she was being trafficked.
I went there, but I did the plays in high school.
for a show, The Big Gay Sketch Show, which was on the now defunct Logo Network.
Wait, so Big Gay Sketch Show, was that the... So that was the first thing I ever auditioned for, and I got it.
I was 22, and I thought, well, this will be easy.
And then I learned, it became clear that it was a difficult career.
And so then I did UCB in New York, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater for many years.
I did sketch and I did a lot of one-woman shows.
But that involved a lot of like, I did one where it had a cake in it and a full rotisserie chicken and seven wigs.
And so I would have to bring all the wigs and then I would stop at the Gristiti's grocery store above and buy a cake and a full rotisserie chicken.
I had amassed a collection of 45 or so wigs that were gross and had chicken juice in them.
They got all chickeny and they got all cakey.
Oh, just, you know, being a comedian, being an actor.
I mean, you know, auditioning, stuff, getting jobs.
You know, very, very difficult and finding your voice and developing material.
You know, this is a lifelong craft, you know, practicing the craft.
I thought I was naive and it's, you know, it turned out to be a whole thing.
No, but really, you take the LIE all the way out?
I never in my wildest dreams imagined that that was possible.
The summer I graduated from college, my plan was that I was going to dress up as Pippi Longstocking and sell popsicles in Union Square.
And my gimmick would be that I would be dressed as Pippi Longstocking.
I also was really wanting to teach English in Romania or one of the Balkan states.
Never did I ever, ever think that that was possible, no.
I was doing a showcase in LA, and they invited me to audition, and then I did.
But then Bobby Moynihan, I guess maybe had seen me at UCB doing a one-woman show and he came up to me and he said, hey, you're funny.
No, but seriously, like, you know, just when someone reaches out to you in the dark.
No, but no, if he had not done that, honestly, I would be in Romania.
I heard some titters, mild titters, which was so encouraging because I had heard that there would be dead silence.
And then when I got a single titter, I thought, okay, I'm flying.
I don't think I did at that point have representation.
I did have an agent and a manager at that point.
Oh, well, so the thing was, it was just me.
And bless them, I had known a few folks there from UCB who rescued me from the choppy, choppy waters.
of my own nervousness and really helped me out.
I just want to say, like, with that audition, like, I practiced so many times.
I must have said that out loud 50,000 times.
And I felt okay about it because I had done that.
Whatever ability I ever had left with my reliance on those cue cards, and now I cannot memorize.
And I forget, I'm just, I can't remember stuff anymore.
I miss Jenna and Chris, the stage managers, so much.
But I also am so happy to be going to bed at 10.30, which is when I would normally go to bed.
And really do miss everybody that I worked with because it's a beautiful, it's such a family and it's wonderful.
But then I wanted to, when you're there, you are eating breadsticks.
Oh, that was something that I started doing when I wasn't at SNL.
I always loved, you know, I love characters.
And I don't know if I would have had the courage to do it if...
question i did i think it was pretty obvious the whole time um i did give ellen that award yes okay and and um wiki really framed that as a pivotal moment well okay okay i thought i was gay gay before that but that's cool no that's that's interesting no they're trying to claim it
Yes, and she was wearing a dress that was so, the shoulders were so tall.
And I don't know how she saw to her left or to her right.
I mean, before it turns into the northern state, sure.
Now, do you think that... The Triborough is my favorite bridge.
It is up in... I could talk parkways with you all day, Will.
Oh, I'm sorry, this kushkushko is into Greenpoint.
Thank you, because I thought I had lost my marbles.
Let's take a look at the live traffic if we could.
Bring your bongos, Will, and just play the music.
No, it's a thing that, yeah, folks are doing carpentry, and so am I. And I'm doing it, and that's what.
That I would make cabinets, that I would want to make cabinets.
I've said that, and now I have made a cabinet.
I've got a garage and I got a bunch of stuff in there.
So that's my new... You got a workshop in the garage?
And yeah, that's what I... So when I left SNL, I needed to know that I was jumping to something, which was making cabinets.
And that's what I have done in my spare time.
Okay, so the books, okay, so we, you know, I was joking before about the book being about a diver named Natalie.
The book is the second in a, it's the second book in a series of books called The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Math Science, okay?
And it's a middle grade novel, which is for ages, you know, eight to 14.
Anyway, so Roald Dahl was a middle grade author.
And of course, so this, no, so I started writing this book.
I came up with this idea with these characters like 10 years ago.
And whenever I wasn't at SNL, I would be writing this thing.
And so the Secrets of the Purple Pearl is the second in the Millicent Quibb series.
And it's about a mad scientist who starts a school for girls in a repressive turn-of-the-century town.
And in the second one, the Purple Pearl, you know, they're at a hotel and they're having an adventure.
I really, I wanted to be a YA, no, a middle grade novelist.
Okay, so middle grade, so the thing about YA is it's like monsters and making out.
It's grappling with questions of do you want to be, how do you want to appear in the world?
What are you willing to sacrifice to fight for it?
Also, these books can be really funny and characters can have really good funny names.
And I think names and hair and funny voice are the most important.
The illustrator is a beautiful artist named Alfredo Caceres, and he did such beautiful art.
I did have like ideas of what the stuff, you know, because it's imagination.
So I made little doodles, and then he made beautiful artworks.
It was a beautiful collaborative process and it was wonderful.
Well, I'm going to be doing some stonemasonry later, but that's another story.
Well, that depends on the traffic on the G-Dub.
I cook, you know, I've become a gardener, big gardener.
So I make, I just chop up whatever I've got and I just... I do it, yeah.
A melange, a vegetable melange over whatever I got.