Molly Shannon’s tragic childhood inspired her SNL character Mary Katherine Gallagher



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Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher on Saturday Night Live

Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher in Saturday Night Live
Screenshot: NBC

Molly shannon had not shared details of the tragedy that shaped his life until now. The comedy superstar has a memory, Hello Molly!, released in April of next year who will dive into his difficult family life, and in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Shannon discusses a traumatic experience it was not very well known. When she was four, her mother, younger sister and cousin died in a car crash that happenred while his father was driving under the influence. Years later, she drew on that grief at to create his beloved Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher.

“I was heartbroken and very sad and I just tried to keep it all together as a kid,” Shannon says. “There’s no way you can feel that kind of deep pain about the death of your mother and sister, so you just keep it all in place, and it comes back later in life.”

After the accident, Shannon and her other sister Mary ilived with their aunt while their father was healing at the hospital in serious injuries sustained in the accident. “The life we ​​left was not the same life we ​​came back to. I just felt like everything was different. And I wanted my aunt to do things like my mother, ”she recalls.s.

Shannon channeled it pain in order to create the iconic Mary katherine gallagher, which she designed during an improvisation exercise for a comedy show produced by Wild nights with Emilyby Madeleine Olnek. “[Mary Katherine] was really based on me, how I felt after the accident-rvery nervous, accident prone, wanting to please, fucked up but hopeful, ”says Shannon. “I just exaggerated everything I felt as a little girl and made a character out of her.”

In the same Los Angeles Times interview, Lorne Michaels rcall throw Shannon in SNL, saying, “Everything she did was fully formed. You had that level of intensity where she’s totally in it. I don’t know how this level of determination formed, but she had it the moment I met her. She was fearless. And also funny.

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