"SNL" Star Cecily Strong Reveals the Cover of Her Upcoming Memoir
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Emmy Award nominee Cecily Strong, who joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2012 and has since won adulation for her impersonations of Melania Trump, Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, and many others, will publish her first book in August, according to publisher Simon & Schuster. The memoir, whose cover OprahMag.com is exclusively revealing, is titled This Will All Be Over Soon.
Strong began the book during COVID lockdown in a Hudson Valley Airbnb she was sharing with two friends, she tells OprahMag.com. Grieving over the death by brain cancer of her 30-year-old cousin Owen, and terrified after her new boyfriend contracted the coronavirus, Strong began chronicling her memories of Owen, who—amid brutal treatments to treat the glioblastoma that would eventually kill him nevertheless managed to fall in love—told his father: “Minus brain cancer, this has been the best year of my life.”
Recalling his confidence, optimism, and courage even when things were at their worst, Strong says, “Owen became my North Star. He helped me find hope and humor even when I was so sad, and so anxious. I knew I had to keep his story going.” She hopes that in writing this tribute to him, readers might see that “even in the scariest of times we too can still have the best year of our lives, if only we could be a little more like Owen.”
The memoir is written as a series of diary entries. While Strong is known for her ability to make us laugh, she admits this book is not meant to be funny. Of course, though, she says, "Even in the darkest times, there are going to be funny moments—even magical moments, and I think you'll find those throughout the book. They were there for me, even while mourning Owen and facing what all of us are during this endless pandemic. There's a light. Owen is that light for me."
In April of 2020, Strong published an excerpt from the short essays she was writing about Owen and a new man she'd just met. "At first I thought it was so difficult to meet someone right as I was losing someone I loved so much. I knew he'd have to be patient with me. He'd have to let me grieve," she wrote.
Right after learning of Owen's death, Strong wrote: "That night I took moments to glance at the clock on my phone, wondering where in time and space was Owen? What part of his journey was he on at this particular moment? I supposed I have my own magical thinking...if anyone could figure out how to beat time and space, it would be the smartest and most wonderful and bravest human I knew. My cousin Owen."
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