Thanks for having me. Are you kidding me?
Oh my god, this is so fun being here, I love it.
I have known you now, what is it, like 25 years?
Yes.
I am so bad with math, but it's so long.
So long, Drew.
Is it 25 years?
Yeah, at least. Yeah, yeah.
It might be longer.
Yeah, that's wild.
This book made me feel like I was meeting you
for the first time.
Oh, thank you, Drew.
It really did, it's so incredible.
Thank you.
And the book opens and you're talking about your childhood
and everything is peaceful and normal,
and you're in a big family, a mom, a dad, two sisters.
Yes.
And then in 1969,
your family was coming home from a party.
It's a long drive home, people are tired,
there's debates whether to take the car ride or not
and it matriculates into a car accident.
And that crash killed your mom
and your baby sister and cousin,
and you were in the car.
Mm-hm, mm-hm.
How was it writing about this?
Yeah, and I was gonna say,
so in that accident too, my dad did survive.
He was very badly injured, his legs were badly injured.
So yeah, so my baby sister was killed,
but my older sister, Mary, survived too.
So there were three deaths, three survivors.
My life changed in a split second.
The rug was pulled from under me.
Life as I knew it changed in one second.
And it was, it was...
It was...
it was really hard, you know?
So writing that chapter, once I was done with that chapter,
I was like, okay, I can take a deep breath,
now we can get on with the story.
But I could not not include it
because losing my mom at an early age
had a profound effect on my life.
And then my dad went on to,
he was devastated of course, too.
And then he went on to raise two girls.
He tried his hardest, I really admired him.
And that was not so easy.
He had braces on his legs from the accident,
had to learn to walk again.
And he really gave it his all.
It was like skiing down the Black Diamond
ski slope with no poles, not the easiest, you know?
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
And you are one of the most emboldened,
brave, fearless people.
And so it's so humanizing.
Yeah. Because I would imagine
and maybe I'm assuming wrong, but even me, who's bold,
watches you do Mary Katherine Gallagher
and Sally O'Malley and all your characters and think,
God, the spine on that woman.
(audience laugh)
(laughs) That's so funny.
(audience applauds)
Aw.
Thank you.
I mean, there's a picture of you,
I think it's the first time
you're doing Mary Katherine Gallagher,
and you are midair, Sandler's in the frame.
Oh my god. And you are.
I'm like, how's she gonna land?
(Molly laughs)
There's no strings, you are in mid-flight.
And that kind of freedom.
How do you have that kind of freedom and then also,
intimacy and struggle.
How does that work?
Well, I think it gave me, the performance.
That character is just kind of an exaggerated version
of how I felt when I was little,
kind of anxious and accident-prone and passionate.
And I just amplified it by like a thousand,
and I would get very nervous performing live on SNL,
me, Molly Shannon.
But I would use the nervous energy in the performance.
Like when Gena Rositano was counting me down,
before I went on to do the first Mary Katherine,
she's like, okay, we're ready.
And five, four, three, two.
My heart is pounding, it's like an adrenaline rush.
I'm definitely scared, but I just go through it.
And I think the physical release felt really good.
And I just get in the moment, like in the zone.
You really did kill it on SNL
and you made these famous characters
that we still quote every day of our lives.
I mean, it's really crazy. Thank you.
(audience applauds)
Thank you so much.
And I think that is a fun way
in which we get to love something and the person.
I mean, I do the Sally O'Malley,
I'm actually gonna be 50, not so far away,
and everything is Mary Katherine Gallagher.
(upbeat bright music)