A tragic car accident, an unavailable father, and the dark reality of fame. For Molly Shannon,
being a superstar doesn't excuse her from all the things she tried to keep hidden.
Molly Shannon was in a tragic car accident during her formative years that killed her mother,
baby sister, and cousin. Her father, who had been driving and is believed to have fallen
asleep at the wheel, had been drunk at the time of the accident. Shannon revealed in her memoir,
Hello, Molly!, that she and her family had just attended a relative's high
school graduation party where a lot of alcohol was being served.
Shannon said on The Drew Barrymore Show:
"My life changed in a split second. The rug was
pulled from under me. Life as I knew it changed in one second."
She added that losing her mom at an early age had a profound effect on the trajectory of her life.
According to Shannon, she was able to gather her mother's heartbreaking last words right
before she died. She wrote in her memoir that the car was badly mangled and added:
"A man passing the scene stopped. My mother was lying on the ground beside our car and
she asked him, 'Where are my girls?' She wanted to gather her three little girls
and she couldn't. Her heart must have broken in that moment. And those were her final words."
In her book, Hello, Molly!, Molly Shannon's neck was frequently very dirty in her youth
because she was never properly bathed. According to The New York Times,
her father was severely crippled due to the car accident and as a result, couldn't take care of
his children well. Shannon notes in her memoir that he had leg braces and had to re-learn how
to walk following the accident. Because Shannon's father was also struggling with an addiction to
drugs and alcohol, he wasn't an attentive and responsible dad. Since her mother had died,
it was terrifying for Shannon that her only living parent could barely take care of himself, let
alone his two children. It eventually got to the point where she had to raise herself. She wrote:
"I never knew which dad I would get. The one who met my needs, or the one who couldn't."
Shannon elaborated on her feelings growing up with her father:
"We were completely reliant on him to be taken care of. To be fed. Our
survival depended on him, so it would be completely terrifying when he'd
fly into his rages or even worse, descend into silence, ignoring us."
Molly Shannon said she became one of the biggest troublemakers at school because
of all the anger and sadness she was holding on to due to the accident that
killed her family members. Her school never knew how to deal with Shannon's acting out,
so they continued to punish her without any suggestion of counseling. She explained in
her memoir that she fell in with the bad crowd and would spend much of her school hours in time out.
But her daredevil antics would lead to some of the most hilarious adventure stories. While
discussing her new book on The Howard Stern Show, Shannon revealed she once tricked a
stewardess into letting her hop on a plane that was flying to New York. Shannon's antics worked,
and she ended up spending the day in Manhattan with her childhood friend.
Shannon said in an interview in 1997 on Late Night with Conan O'Brien that
she and her best friend, Anne, were bad, wild little girls. She added:
"We got there and we didn't have much money so we just dined and
dashed, we went to all these restaurants and we'd leave."
During her childhood, Molly Shannon's father taught her that it was okay to steal and cheat
your way through life, so long as you didn't get caught. When Shannon had entered her teen years,
she began shoplifting with her sister on a regular basis. She even developed a
code name for shoplifting, instead calling it swimming to her sister. When they finally got
caught by police officers for stealing, they were forced to attend shoplifting
anonymous meetings. Although she and her sister tried to play it off as a big joke,
she knows now that her behavior wasn't funny. She told Conan O'Brien in 1997:
"I just wanted to be bad. My friend and I used to shoplift. We were like little criminals."
Shannon hilariously states in her memoir that she really wanted to go
to juvenile detention so she could gain some street cred. She wrote:
"The thought of juvenile detention truly excited me. I thought 'yeah,
I wanna be with them bad girls. This is so fun!' […] The whole thing was very exciting."
Molly Shannon detailed in her memoir how difficult her relationship was with her father, Jim Shannon,
while growing up. She recalled that her dad would get extremely jealous when she would hang out with
her own friends. According to Shannon, Jim was so possessive over her that she would end up
feeling guilty for having a life outside of her relationship with him. Later on, she discovered
that he was using her as a surrogate spouse to cope with the loss of his wife's untimely death.
Jim would encourage Molly to cause mischief, too. She told Conan O'Brien in 1997:
"If you could break the rules and get away with it, that was just a good thing."
Despite his unconventional parenting, Shannon shared in her memoir that there were many
endearing qualities about her father and that she appreciated his eccentric outlook on life.
Though they had a turbulent history,
she and her father shared a strong bond as her career blossomed. Shannon told USA Today:
"He really was like my biggest supporter. He was like, 'Listen, you march into those offices of
those agents and Hollywood managers and just say, 'Hey! Hold the phone! I got
talent!' And then he was like, 'And use your singing voice.' That was his advice."
Molly Shannon explained in her memoir, Hello, Molly!, that her father was never able to be his
true self throughout his life. She discovered well into her adulthood that her father was
either gay or bi-sexual and that he felt the need to bottle the closeted orientations with
drugs and alcohol. She felt awful that her father was never able to live authentically,
and it took decades for him to finally admit the truth to his daughter. She recalled on The
Howard Stern Show that she just asked him on day while they were sitting by a hotel pool:
"'Have you ever thought you might be gay?' And he just said, 'Most definitely.'"
She also tragically revealed that his sexuality was brushed under
the rug by her mom when she was still alive. Shannon told Stern:
"I think he had tried to tell my mom before that. He said, 'I saw this psychiatrist,
and the psychiatrist told me I'm a latent homosexual,' and she said,
'Oh, that psychiatrist never should've told you that.'"
Molly Shannon r-evealed in Hello, Molly! that she found it difficult to
have romantic relationships in college at NYU even though she had a handful of handsome and
eligible suitors. Shannon blames it on her co-dependent relationship with her father,
which she says stunted her ability to have a normal dating life. She felt like she had to
be on her own for a while because she couldn't bear the idea of taking care of someone the way
she had taken care of her father for all those years. As a result, it took the actor a long
time before she felt comfortable enough to be romantically involved with anyone.
The SNL star has been happily married to Fritz Chesnut since 2004. They have two children
together: a daughter named Stella, and a son named Nolan. Shannon told Page Six that the last thing
on her mind while starring on SNL was starting a family because work was such a high priority. So
when she met her future husband Fritz, she was very direct about her plans. She said:
"I wanted to have kids. I was very clear about what I wanted."
During the beginning of her career, Molly Shannon's agent also represented the late
Diff'rent Strokes actor Gary Coleman. Her agent offered Shannon a chance to meet Coleman,
of whom she was a massive fan. As she shared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Shannon
initially thought he was sweet. But everything took a dark turn when Coleman invited Shannon
up to his hotel room. It wasn't until they got up to his suite that she realized the sitcom star's
intentions. Their agent left them alone, and all at once, Coleman attacked her in his hotel room.
She also discussed the incident on The Howard Stern Show. Shannon said
Coleman was relentless and she had to keep pushing him away from her. She told Stern:
"He was like trying to kiss me and get on top and I was like, 'Gary, stop.' So,
I push him off. Then, I would get off the bed. Then, he would bounce on the
bed...and wrap himself around me. Then, I would fling him off. And then he got
on top of me. [...] I guess because of his size I didn't feel physically threatened."
Shannon had to continue the cycle of throwing the star
off her body until she could eventually escape.
Molly Shannon has been very open about how much she struggled to make it in Hollywood,
claiming in her memoir that people didn't know what to do with her. Although she
desperately wanted to make it in the business, no one would budge. Shannon
wasn't your typical Hollywood starlet, and as a result, she got dumped by her agent.
Her struggles with not being able to find acting gigs convinced the
White Lotus star to create her own shows. She said in the interview with Variety:
"I really struggled. I eventually did my own show, because I thought,
'They're not really getting what I do and this isn't really happening.'"
It took Shannon writing her own content to finally get her foot in the door. She
was gaining so much momentum that she was eventually accepted as a cast member on
Saturday Night Live! Her career changed completely after that. But unfortunately,
the fame that came with comedy wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.
Molly Shannon opens up in her memoir about her struggles with anxiety and
depression. Shannon explained to USA Today:
"I had been driven to achieve, achieve, achieve,
and I was running and working so hard at my show and trying to make it..."
Once she did excel and find fame,
fans would shout out to her and it became a jarring experience for the actor. She shared:
"They know my name, and they're coming up to me on the streets. I fell into a depression
for a few months because I was like, 'The one person I really want to tell me that
I'm good and say she's proud of me is my mom, and this is not bringing her back."
Her stardom on SNL did nothing to ease her pain. She told Howard Stern that
she would get very anxious when fans approached her. She said:
"'But that's when I got the most depressed."
"Really?"
"I went into such a depression.'"
Although she was incredibly grateful for the praise she'd receive, it couldn't replace her
sadness. Shannon explained that she would get a gnawing, sad feeling about it. She added:
"I was like, 'Oh. Fame doesn't fix any of this. I still have a f—g hole in my heart.'"
Although acting was always Molly Shannon's greatest passion in life,
she almost quit Hollywood because of the pressure she experienced for not looking
like a typical Hollywood starlet. The SNL star told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I bumped into a girl before the audition, and she was like, 'Oh my God. It's so nice to see
you! Have you gained, like, 100 pounds?' And I was like, okay, that is so mean."
She admitted that she nearly gave up her career altogether because of the experience. Shannon also
wrote in Hello, Molly! that she was once asked by a photographer in the midst of a photoshoot:
"Why are you so ugly?"
But Shannon has managed to shrug off all the nasty comments she has received by her peers in
the entertainment industry. The actor has been starring in movies and TV shows from left to
right for decades. She has taken on major roles in shows including The Other Two and The White Lotus.
"You didn't know that you were competing against a…superstar!"
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the
Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness
helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.