Molly Shannon details how her tragic childhood inspired her SNL character Mary Katherine Gallagher
In an interview with the LA Times, the SNL alum opened up about the tragedy that shaped her life
TV News Molly Shannon
Molly Shannon hadn’t shared details about the tragedy that shaped her life until now. The comedic superstar has a memoir, Hello, Molly!, coming out in April of next year that’ll delve into her difficult family life, and in a new interview with the LA Times, Shannon discusses a traumatic experience that wasn’t widely known. When she was four years old, her mother, younger sister, and cousin died in a car accident that occurred while her father was driving under the influence. Years later, she tapped into that grief to create her beloved Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher.
“I was very heartbroken and very sad and just trying to hold it all together as a kid,” says Shannon. “There’s no way that you could feel that type of deep pain about your mother and your sister being dead, so you just hold it all in, and it comes up later in life.”
After the accident, Shannon and her other sister Mary lived with their aunt while their father healed in the hospital from severe wounds sustained in the accident. “The life that we left was not the same life we were coming back into. It just felt like everything was different. And I wanted my aunt to do stuff like my mom,” she recalls.
Shannon channeled her pain in order to create the iconic Mary Katherine Gallagher, who she conceived during an improv exercise for a comedy show directed by Wild Nights With Emily’s Madeleine Olnek. “[Mary Katherine] was really based on me, how I felt after the accident—really nervous, accident-prone, wanting to please, fucked up but full of hope,” says Shannon. “I just exaggerated everything I felt as a little girl and turned it into a character.”
In the same LA Times interview, Lorne Michaels recalls casting Shannon in SNL, saying, “Everything she did was fully formed. You had this level of intensity where she’s totally in it. I don’t know how that level of determination was formed, but she had it the moment I met her. She was fearless. And also funny.”
42 Comments
reminds me of stephen colbert’s similarly tragic origin story.
He was bitten by a radioactive Bill O’Reilly, right?
he lost his dad and two brothers in a plane crash when he was 10
Sweet Christmas that is terrible. I prefer my version.
Yes, and he spent the next 10 years in Middle-earth, Mars, and all manner of far-flung places. Eastern 212 is also why we have the Sterile Cockpit Rule:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_flight_deck_rule I can’t imagine how infuriating it must be to know that you lost your loved ones from fucking small talk.
See also US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 which, of course happened many years later. Breaking that rule contributed to the crash.
Wouldn’t a radioactive Bill O’Reilly just be Bill O’Reilly?
Shannon discusses a traumatic experience that wasn’t widely known.She was in a documentary (Dead Mothers Club) about it.
“widely”…
Hey, everyone! Check out King Kong Bundy — of all people! — fat shaming a commenter!
I don’t read it as fat shaming, I read it as mocking the claim that the documentary was widely watched.
Since Kinja doesn’t seem to work anymore, I’m gonna respond to myself in order to address the commenter in the greys who thought that my previous comment was meant to be taken seriously. In short, my previous comment was not meant to be taken seriously.
Most of my fat is in my head and neck. And several other places.
You were great in Moving…
“deeply”
Molly Shannon has definitely channeled this into some very dark and very funny performances, for Bryan Fuller and in other things
I hope we see her in a lot more roles because she just keeps getting better. I always liked her on SNL but they really ran her characters into the ground and I wonder if that slowed her career down afterwards.
Like a lot of comedians she does pain and vulnerability well. She’s surprisingly raw and genuine in Must Love Dogs, which I unwisely watched after suddenly losing my beloved cat since it’s about a woman in the aftermath of suddenly losing her beloved dog. I don’t know if it’s a good movie but I appreciated that her character is messy in her pain, doesn’t make the best decisions, and it’s clear there aren’t really any good decisions to make. No distractions, not even A Man’s Love, is going to rescue or redeem her. She survives to the point of being able to continue. That’s much more true to my experience of loss.
Sorry about your cat.
I genuinely liked Superstar! (the Mary Catherine Gallagher movie) but it probably cemented the impression that that was all she could do.
loved her in serendipity.
I think it’s fascinating that she, like Colbert, is beloved among her colleagues on top of being a brilliant performer. Both have far better reasons to be brusque and shitty than your average jerk, but by all accounts both are delightful human beings in a way that you shouldn’t take for granted in the comedy world.
It’s an especially weird triumvirate with Joe Biden who is also an Irish-American Catholic who went through a horrific family tragedy without being completely destroyed by it. I’m curious if there’s some cultural or epigenetic factor in that demographic that correlates with being more resilient.
Well, Catholicism is very specific in that suffering, hardship and deprivation are God’s favourite things.
if there is a god, who could credibly doubt its favorite things are suffering and death?
Catholicism shaped my pessimistic outlook on life and honed my sense of irony for all things. It started when I was chastised by a nun for smiling after receiving my first communion.
I think it’s in the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, where he has a character notice that his Catholic friends are better at accepting the situation and moving on, after the character abruptly ends a relationship with someone they liked, than his non-religious friends are.
The character hypothesizes it’s because the religious friends were formally educated about forgiveness, while the non-religious friends didn’t have that framework and were struggling to figure out how to react.Maybe it’s the same when dealing with tragedy; it helps to have been given a solid heads-up by your religious training on how to forgive the universe.
Being raised Catholic myself, culturally Catholic now, I think there is also something to be said about confession. Just getting something off your chest and receiving a form of forgiveness can probably be helpful even if you don’t really believe it. That being said most of their stances are dogsht that American Catholics don’t really abide (I believe 98% of American Catholics use birth control).
Strong community and close family are very powerful forces for healing.
I think it’s got as much to do with simply being Irish, rather than Irish Catholic. My protestant Irish family is the same way.
That’s the shittiest and most fucked-up celebrity childhood tragedy I’ve heard since Kelsey Grammer. The poor child. Good on her for rising above it.
Don’t google Darrell Hammond’s childhood.
Too late. Fuck me
I just looked his bio up. I had no idea. That is near Job-level.
One after another. Just brutal.
Love that she’s had a career resurgence. She was great on The Other Two and I still need to see White Lotus.
She is an American Treasure. God bless her.
In retrospect I guess she didn’t have to dig too deep to prepare for her small-but-meaningful role in Promising Young Woman.
Oh, that’s right! I didn’t even think of her role in that movie when I read the article yesterday. Good catch.
I had no idea she had this family background. What strength and resiliency she’s had for almost all of her life.Now onto the shallow: Who else thinks she’s underrated as a very sexy woman?
I remember her telling the story on WTF and Maron being appropriately aghast.
A lot of great comedians credit hardship and tragedy for honing their skillset.