FROM LEF T: ADAM DETOUR; TRACEY B. WILSON; COURTES Y OF LOGO ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;.;;; • Summer/Fall 2016 • ;rrıve 51
funny girl
McKinnon grew up in Sea Cli;, Long Island, 25
miles east of Manhattan. She and her younger
sister, Emily, a stand-up comic, were raised on
comedies, which they devoured along with their
mother, Laura, and father, Michael, who died
when McKinnon was 18. Family favorites include
the Mel Brooks cult classic The Producers, along
with Shirley Temple and Christopher Guest
movies. In the mid-’90s, a teenaged McKinnon
discovered SNL players Molly Shannon, Ana
Gasteyer and Cheri Oteri—women who, along
with trailblazers like Gilda Radner and Jane
Curtin, paved the way for Poehler, Tina Fey and,
now, McKinnon.
“I was seeing women who were not acting
like ingénues and who were not afraid to be com-
plete bizarros,” McKinnon says, “and I identified
with that because I felt like I was that instead
of an ingénue, and was trying to make sense of
that and what that would mean for me in my life.
They were very helpful in that way.”
At Columbia, she majored in theater but
contemplated careers in music—she grew up
playing the cello, piano and guitar—painting and
teaching. But the annual Varsity Show, a student-
written musical satire, gave her “the bug” for
sketch comedy.
“I did that for three years and that really
made me think I could somehow make a career
out of playing a bunch of di;erent weird char-
acters,” she says. “It seemed like an impossible
dream, but I really wanted to do that.”
It’s a good thing she did, because the woman
is hilarious, says Leslie Jones, her co-star on
SNL and in the Ghostbusters reboot, out July 15.
Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy round out
the quartet made famous by Bill Murray, Dan
Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Harold Ramis in the
original film, released in 1984, the year McKinnon was born.
But what is it that makes her so damn funny?
“You’d have to ask God that,” Jones says.
“You’d have to ask the universe and the warlock
that made her. Because she is just past what
comedy even is. ... She is definitely the births of
Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball all put together.
She’s just like old comedy to me.”
Paul Feig, her director on Ghostbusters,
concurs.
“Kate McKinnon is one of the most inventive,
funniest, strangest people I’ve ever met, and I
absolutely love her to death,” he says. Before
But what is it that makes her so damn
funny? “You’d have to ask God that.
You’d have to ask the universe and
the warlock that made her.”
from left:
McKinnon and Noah
Plener performing
with her Upright Citi-
zens Brigade sketch
group GRAMPS, at
SketchfestN YC, 2011;
McKinnon (third
from right) and the
cast of The Big Gay
Sketch Show during
the first season.
