Molly Shannon's Year of Death and 'Divorce' – and How She Finally Got Hollywood to Take Her Seriously
Is everything OK with Molly Shannon?
Hearing her name might instantly conjure up the image of a soft-spoken Catholic schoolgirl who sometimes, when she gets nervous, tucks her hands firmly under her armpits and then smells them -- "like this!" -- before throwing her arms in the air in jubilant glee. Or maybe it sparks an image of her out of character, beaming from ear to ear, a smile so big it features the teeth farthest back in her mouth.
The very same Molly Shannon we loved on Saturday Night Live is having a rather bleak year, at least onscreen: first in Other People, playing a cancer-stricken matriarch in her final year, and next opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in HBO's evisceratingly hilarious -- and hilariously eviscerating -- new series, Divorce, premiering Oct. 9.
"My year of death and divorce!" Shannon exclaims, breaking into a giggle. It's a recent Thursday and Shannon is in New York on a day off from filming. She pauses a moment, before musing on finding humor in those darker moments. "Those types of situations are never just black or white. They're always complicated."
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The 52-year-old actress' turn to more dramatic fare isn't a plot twist in her narrative. You don't even need to go as far back as her childhood -- raised in Ohio by a teacher and a sales manager -- to see that. In 1987, Shannon graduated from NYU's prestigious Tisch School of Arts drama program and, it's only fitting, then, that her first onscreen role was playing Meg in a 1989 adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera.
"I always thought of myself as a very serious, dramatic actress," Shannon reflects. "I was really much more into drama, but when I came to L.A. I was like, 'How do you break in?' At the time, Second City was offering classes in Santa Monica and my friend Rob Muir said, 'Let's do a comedy show, because comedy is king.' We were in my kitchen, in my dumpy apartment in Hollywood across from an El Pollo Loco, and I was like 'Is it? Is comedy king?!'"
"It was hard to get an agent -- I was auditioning, but I wasn't really getting the stuff I wanted," she continues, excitedly running through her life's story. "When I was at NYU, I created Mary Katherine Gallagher in a stage show and people really responded to that. They were like, 'You should be on Saturday Night Live!' And I was like, 'Really?! You think?! OK!' So then I headed to L.A. thinking, 'Well, maybe that would be a good way to get into show biz, if I do a stage show where I do characters.' But I always considered myself a dramatic comedian. Like, the characters were always very serious."
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Shannon and Muir created The Rob and Molly Show, which they put up at local theaters. That turned into a yearlong stint on In Living Color, which earned her a coveted spot on Saturday Night Live in 1995. There, she introduced Mary Katherine Gallagher to the masses, as well characters including 50-year-old Sally O'Malley, who likes to kick and stretch and kick, and Teri Rialto, the "Delicious Dish" host who helped make Alec Baldwin's irresistible Schweddy Balls infamous. When she left the show in 2001, she'd surpassed Victoria Jackson as SNL's longest-serving female cast member. (Her record's since been beaten by Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch.)
"I never felt pigeonholed [by comedy], because that's how I got my break and I struggled for so long that I was just like, 'Oh my God! This is so great! I'm meeting Lorne Michaels! Now he's putting me on the show!'" she reveals. "So, I was like, 'YAY! This is my way in!'"
Still, between roles in comedy blockbusters and a handful of sitcoms, Shannon felt an itch to return to her dramatic roots. She credits one man with helping her do it: Mike White, a fellow comedian and close friend who wrote the 2007 dramedy Year of the Dog for her.
"I feel like because he cast me in that and then also Enlightened, it showed people, like, 'Oh, wow. She can do that,'" she says. "A lot of times when I get offered these parts from directors, they'll always reference Mike White. I'm so grateful that he did that, because that is not always an easy transition. But Mike knows me, so he knew I could do it."
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One of those directors is Chris Kelly, who made this year's Sundance darling Other People, a semiautobiographical indie film about a struggling comedy writer, David (Fargo's Jesse Plemons), who returns to his childhood home when his mother (Shannon) is diagnosed with cancer.
"The first person I said [I wanted] was 'a Molly Shannon type,'" Kelly explains to ET. "She was always my favorite [on SNL], because she was so exuberant and there was such a joy about her characters. She was good at playing big and broad, but all her sketch characters were also rooted in a real emotion. A lot of her post-SNL work has been so lovely, too, like Enlightened and Year of the Dog. She's done these kind of small, nuanced, dramatic performances. But I was like, 'That's not enough! Come on! Put her in more things!'"
In the end, Kelly says casting an actress known for being "funny first" unintentionally made the film even more dramatic. "I was like, 'It would be nice, because the movie is so sad and there are moments that are tough, to have someone like Molly be so funny and full of life who will bring levity to those scenes,'" he points out. "And it actually does bring levity to the scenes, but it [also] makes the scenes that much worse. Because there are actors and actresses that you expect to see be sick and die on camera -- that's their bread and butter -- but you've only ever seen Molly be so full of life. To see someone like her go through that in this movie is jarring."
It's a juxtaposition Plemons remembers playing out on set, too. "You can't meet Molly and not fall in love with her," he gushes in a phone interview, citing one memory that, for him, sums up shooting the film.
"You can't meet Molly and not fall in love with her." -- Jesse Plemons
