-Welcome back to "Late Night." We're here with Cecily Strong.
So, this is a memoir that you wrote this year
about sort of the anxiety and how difficult it was
to get through the pandemic and also a very difficult
personal thing, and my condolences,
your cousin, Owen, passed away. -Yes.
-Very young and very tragically.
-Yeah, he was 30, and we lost him in January 2020
to glioblastoma, and I didn't really start grieving it
and was back at work
and didn't know how to talk about it really.
And then the world shut down, and I had all this time
to sort of -- but wound up being a gift sort of --
it was like I was trying to find out
how Owen lived so well with glioblastoma.
Like, my favorite of his quotes is he told his dad, "You know,
Minus the brain cancer, this has been the best year of my life."
[ Both laugh ]
And he was, you know, just a very positive person.
And so I have -- in trying to figure that out,
how he lived so well, was sort of --
I had the best navigator through COVID about just sort of
having positivity or optimism
and hope kind of as an active choice.
-I think it's a real gift to readers right now,
who I think a lot of people, obviously,
have had to deal with loss over the past year,
and this is dealt with in such a sincere but funny way.
Was it also cathartic to write it?
-I mean, so much so.
It was -- I was looking back to see pictures on my phone
actually from March to August or something.
And I was so shocked at how many, like, pictures and videos
of us dancing or having fun.
I was like, "Oh, I had fun too, I guess."
And I think because I would write during the day
and sort of go through that
and then we'd have our little family dinner,
and Kevin would read -- not the woodchuck Kevin,
Kevin my human dear friend, would read at the table.
And we'd, like, cry and sort of talk about it
and then have a dance party. -Very nice.
-Yeah, it was really great.
-I want to also commend you on another fantastic year.
An Emmy nominated for you year, well-deserved.
-I think I was so proud of that whole show.
-It was amazing what you guys pulled off.
-Everybody being there and doing what we did has, like,
kept us all standing and kept us going.
-It was so massively different than anything experienced.
I would just roll down -- every now and then
I walked down the hall, I mean, the fact you guys were doing
a table read in the studio, and just everybody is spread out.
It's usually, like, this really intensely close experience,
and yet, it still felt incredibly intimate
when you watch the show.
This, hard to pull off in a non-pandemic.
You did Jeanine Pirro, and she sang from a box of wine.
-Yeah. -How did this idea come about?
-Well, Tucker texted me --
Brian Tucker is a writer, and he texted me that week like,
"Do you want to do a Jeanine Pirro singing 'My Way,'"
but he wrote it "moy wa." [ Laughter ]
And I was like, "Sure, but we have to --"
You know, I always want to up the ante.
It's become a very fun, physical thing,
and last time, I threw up red wine on Colin.
So I was like, "Well, then I have to be
in a box of wine or something."
And then what's fun about "SNL" is you tell them this,
and then they make it happen, but yeah, so then I looked up --
-You sent this to them?
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
When they say, "How do you do that?"
I was like, "Well, like this."
So, this man is bleeding and in chains.
So I said, "Just without the blood and the chains."
[ Laughter ]
-And it worked out. -It worked out.
-I texted Colin because you and Colin wrote "The girl
you wish you weren't having a conversation with at a party."
And that was the first time you were on "Update,"
and I remember being in awe of you at that moment.
And I was watching, like -- Colin was, like, so --
At one point he was just shaking his head like,
"I cannot believe how out of sight this is."
-It's also I've never -- I feel, like, that's, like,
a hidden side of Colin that people don't know,
is that he loves to be, like, beaten up or something.
Like, he loves having things thrown on him.
At one point I was like -- -He ended up with Black Widow.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah.
She hits him every day. It's okay. It's consensual.
-But it was such a delight.
And congratulations as well on "Schmigadoon!"
We've had a bunch of your co-stars on the show.
They seem to have had a great time.
Was it as much fun to make?
-It was so much fun.
But I'm having even more fun watching the show.
I think I watch it entirely --
the entire thing at least twice a week or something.
And I got to the point where I'm like -- it's, like, I'm watching
and saying their lines along with them,
especially Kristin, who I feel, like, has a lot of, like --
I like to go, "Okay, I'll do it."
And, "Oh, yes, you do!" [ Laughter ]
So it's very fun to sing along.
-Congratulations on that. Thanks for being here.
"This Will All Be Over Soon" is out now.