Shannon opens up about tragedy that shaped her
Loss of mom, sister at age 4 manifests in actor’s characters
When Molly Shannon played Mary Katherine Gallagher on “Saturday Night Live” in the late ’90s, she hurt herself. A lot.
So complete was her dedication to the armpit-sniffing, monologuing Catholic schoolgirl that she’d willingly throw herself into a pile of metal chairs, without padding, and barely register any pain. Then she’d wake up the next day and wonder where the cuts and bruises on her body had come from.
“Isn’t that weird?” Shannon, 56, says recently, sounding genuinely mystified. “I didn’t care if I cut myself or I made myself bleed. I did not give a (expletive). I looked at it like punk rock. I was reckless, and because of what I went through, I just didn’t care about anything.”
Shannon is obliquely referring to the deaths of her mother, younger sister and cousin in a car accident when she was 4. Her father, who had been driving under the influence, survived but was horribly injured. In her years of fame, she hasn’t talked much publicly about the accident or its aftermath, but it cast a long shadow over her childhood in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
“I was very heartbroken and very sad and just trying to hold it all together as a kid,” says Shannon, who has two teenage children with her husband, artist Fritz Chesnut. “There’s no way that you could feel that type of deep pain about your mother and your sister being dead, so you just hold it all in, and it comes up later in life.”
This profound loss shaped the career of a
woman who kept viewers in stitches for seven seasons on “SNL” and has since ascended to national treasure status. Dating back to the endearingly volatile Gallagher, Shannon has gravitated toward characters whose wholesomeness is often suffused with something darker and more complicated — instantly familiar everywomen with deep reserves of sadness and anxiety.
She’s pursued risky, genre-bending projects that explore difficult themes through a humorous lens, including the caustic HBO comedy “Divorce” and the quirky Emily Dickinson biopic “Wild Nights With Emily.” And while she’s no longer crash-landing on tables in the name of art, her commitment to her characters remains unwavering.
She recently appeared in two scene-stealing TV roles tailored to her brand
of cheerful chaos. In HBO’s buzzy summer satire, “The White Lotus,” written and directed by her friend and frequent collaborator Mike White, Shannon appears as a society matriarch who intervenes in her son’s disastrous honeymoon.
And she returns as Pat Dubek, a grieving widowturned-daytime talk show host, in the long-delayed second season of HBO Max’s “The Other Two,” created by former “SNL” head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider.
Beyond that, she has a lead role in the Showtime comedy “I Love This for You,” expected next year, and a memoir, “Hello, Molly!,” which will come out in April. The book will delve into Shannon’s family life and her lovingly complicated relationship with her late father, who came out late in life.
Shannon feels vulnerable sharing many of these
experiences publicly for the first time. “You feel like you put your heart right there on the table,” she says, “but I hope that my story can help other people.”
Over seven seasons at “SNL,” Shannon became known for playing eccentrics with flailing limbs, oodles of nervous energy and mantralike catchphrases, like high-kicking 50-year-old Sally O’Malley and Miss Colleen, the canine-loving host of “Dog Show.”
“Her characters were so funny and manic and over the top, yet it still felt like they had a grounded human pathos and drama to them,” says Kelly.
During production on Kelly’s film “Other People,” in which he cast her as a terminally ill woman whose comedy-writer son moves back to Sacramento to care for her, he marveled at Shannon’s ability to tap into wellsprings of emotion on cue. “In between takes, Molly would be like, ‘Chris, did you ever go to summer camp?’ ” he says, affecting her upbeat tone, “And ‘Action!’ And then she’d be sobbing. She’d go in and out of it so quickly — so authentically. It was wild.”
A major post-“SNL” turning point came when White cast Shannon as a pill-popping mom in the irreverent sitcom “Cracking Up,” which Fox canceled in 2004 after six episodes. White decided to make it up to Shannon by writing “Year of the Dog,” a darkly funny indie film about a single woman whose life unravels after the accidental death of her beloved beagle.
“Mike gave me such a chance by believing that I could do drama,” says Shannon, who credits White, Kelly and Schneider with generating material that plays to her dexterity as a performer. “They know me, and those sides of me that are more serious, so they know how to write for me.”
For “The White Lotus,” she insisted on seeing the good in her character, a woman from old money who tells her daughter-inlaw there’s nothing wrong with being a trophy wife. “She really cares about her son’s happiness, so she’s got to set this girl straight,” Shannon says. “I always tried to understand the character’s values and what’s important to them.”
Shannon takes the same approach to Pat in “The Other Two,” an absurdist comedy about contemporary fame. When Pat’s teenage son becomes a Justin Bieber-esque YouTube star, the unassuming Midwestern mom decides to embrace the celebrity lifestyle.
In the second season, Pat is now the host of a popular daytime talk show. Despite constant encounters with fans and a grueling schedule, she has yet to become jaded. Shannon says she relates strongly to Pat, a devoted mom brimming with excitement about the latest chapter in her life.
“Molly is not taking any single day or opportunity for granted,” says Schneider. “There’s such a humanity within her because of everything that she’s experienced.”
You can hear Shannon’s positivity in the words with which she peppers her sentences. Anchoring coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2018 wedding in character as syrupy anchor Tish Cattigan was a dream, she says. Filming on location in Italy this year was fantastic. And, more than anything, Shannon feels lucky to have a family and a thriving career as a performer.
“I look at life differently, losing my mom, and living beyond years that she ever got to live,” she says. “And I feel gratitude.”