Transcript of Kate McKinnon

I'm Ina Garten, and this is Happy Hour. In each episode, I invite someone really interesting for cocktails and a great conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. Today, I'm joined by Emmy Award-winning actor and comedian Kate McKinnon. You know her from SNL and the Barbie film.

Obviously, I have a taste for the strange.

Kate also has an upcoming children's book called the Millicent Quibb Series.

I cannot get it!

We talk about everything from creating characters to gardening to pickling, alien abductions, and so much more.

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See terms. Kate McKinnon, welcome to Happy Hour.

Thank you so much for having me.

I am so happy to have you here.

I'm so happy to be here.

So I made Caipiroskas. How's that for an unusual name for a drink?

Tell me more.

It's basically limeade with vodka, and it's like the national drink of, like, Exactly.

Yay!

Drink up.

Delish.

It's gonna be a rocky ride. Good.

It is because I'm the biggest lightweight I've ever met. I have one sip and I can feel it.

I can too.

And I've already felt it.

What I say is I spend much more time talking about cocktails than I do actually drinking cocktails. Are you the same way?

Yes. Well, I barely drink. I have a drink maybe once a month. And then when I do—

And so this is it?

Yeah.

Oh, this is it.

And I'm gonna be toasted.

We met a couple of years ago at the barn.

Yes. It was my very best friend, Alex Corillo Vaccino's bachelorette party.

That's—

that's—

I remember you. I couldn't remember who you came with.

My best friend, Alex Corillo Vaccino, and her sister, Francesca. Anyway, we were there for her bachelorette. The 3 of us have always been obsessive fans of yours. Hello.

As I am for you.

Oh, please stop.

Wrong.

Anyway, I said to myself, you know what would be the best bachelorette party? surprise for my best friend, Alex Corlovichino, if I just did something crazy and saw if Ina was around. And I sent an email, and there you were. And then you welcomed us, and it was magical.

It was so much fun.

And we still talk about it, me and Alex Corlovichino and her sister, Francesca.

Tina Fey used to tell her producer, every time she said, what would you like for your birthday? And she would say, I want to meet Ina Garten. And isn't that the sweetest? This went on for years. And we tried to make a date, we tried to make a date, and it never happened. And finally, she said, I wanna meet her. And of course, you can't meet Tina and not have a great time, right?

Of course. I think that's probably a lot of people's birthday wish.

Of course.

What are you doing?

What did you bring?

I brought you stuff in these compostable plastic bags.

They're so elegant.

I brought just some herbs for you.

Is this from your garden?

Well, yes, 'cause we have some thyme and some basil, and you requested mint for the kypros.

Yes, I was hoping. Oh, how fun.

And there's that.

Don't we need mint in our drinks?

We do.

I think we do.

And I've got some sage and lavender for you.

Mint in your drink.

And then I brought you as a present, very expensive, some borlotti beans that I grew.

Wow. You're a serious gardener.

Well, I've become— it's become my whole personality, which is good because I didn't have one to begin with. So this provides something. But aren't they just—

They're just gorgeous.

Gorgeous.

Absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, there they are.

They're broad beans?

Yes.

Thank you.

They're broad beans. And you can shuck these later.

Oh, shucks.

By your lonesome. Yes. Okay. There we go.

This is just like a bounty. I love it. Absolutely love it. So, a friend of mine described you as like Russian nesting dolls. You open one doll, and there's another personality inside that has a completely different talent. I mean, it's amazing. You're a comedian, obviously. You're an actor.

Sure.

You're a writer. You've written incredible books, which we're gonna talk about. You're a singer. You play the piano. And now you've moved to the country and you do carpentry. Do you do plumbing as well?

I've just begun.

Have you really?

I have just begun.

How do you learn plumbing?

Men.

Men? Oh, men love to teach women things, right?

Well, they have the skills.

To men who like to teach women.

I love men. No, I look at men on YouTube. I love to look at men on YouTube. And then sometimes I will meet a man in the trade who I just have a loving connection with. And I say, hey, show me. And he shows me.

He'll show you anything.

And I watch that man and I learn from that man.

So what was the first time you did an impersonation of somebody on stage?

I developed an impression of my art history teacher in high school who is the most fabulous person that ever lived. And I developed this impression and I did it over the loudspeaker. I did the morning announcements as her in high school. And she was very gracious about it.

What was the impression? Do you remember what it was?

Well, she happens to talk like this. And she's a brilliant woman who was a brilliant educator and art historian. She happened also to talk like this. And I Hi, Miss Raver.

You gave the morning announcement.

Yes, I did. I did.

So I did.

And, you know, I have to say it was a pretty good impression.

I'm sure it was a good impression.

And she was such a good sport about it. And it became sort of a thing. And I— but I always love to do accents and voices. And I just think that there— whenever I see an opportunity to play a role, my first and basically only question is, what's the voice? What do they sound like? And then, of course, what's the hair? Those are the only 2 things that matter. The hair is really critical. Yes.

Yes. It's so interesting. Yeah.

It is such a big part of the storytelling. I've never been, like, the greatest technical impressionist. It's more for me, I imagine the inner life of that person, and I I have. To me, the impression has to contain a thesis about who they are, what they mean to the culture, and it has to say something in addition to just sounding like them. And so often I have veered, tried more to say something than to sound exactly like, because I just— there are people who do that so much better than I.

Yeah. And so, and do you— somebody told me that you have 2 words for each person that are opposing. Is that right?

Yes.

So how did you come up with that idea that they're opposing words? They're one thing, but they're something totally different. And do you think they live in all of us, that we all have kind of opposing things? What are yours?

Oh, Christ. Oh, God.

I don't even know.

My God, that would be—

that would be so It's funny, because I think mine are kind of warm or loving or something like that, and really tough. Those are the opposing things in me. And I can imagine they would be similar for you. Huh.

I haven't— you know, you come off as very warm, mostly warm. I'm curious. I'd love to see that chart.

No, just tough in business.

I'm very clear about what I want to do.

That's hot. I like that.

Uh-oh.

It's working. It's working. Drink up. Don't worry. I will. Anyway, but yes, I think the essence of any comedic character is 2 diametrically opposed elements.

That's so interesting.

And that is what makes human beings interesting and funny and capable of being humiliated in a way that makes them endearing and relatable to us.

But you have enormous empathy for the people that you do impressions of. And I think that they don't— they find them funny because they see themselves in it. Am I right? Have you offended anybody?

I have. I'm sure I have. I haven't heard directly from them, but I'm sure I have. Which upsets me because I do— I have, in order to do anybody, I have found something to love about them, even if I profoundly disagree with them.

You know, I had one moment where I was being interviewed on stage at the 92nd Street Y, and I said something that was really funny. People just exploded in the audience, and they were like stomping their feet on the floor.

And I—

in that moment, I remember sitting up there thinking, oh my God, this is what a comedian feels like. I could— I felt like I'd levitated. It was like I could— I was so high, I could like float away. Is that the way you feel when you're on stage and you're entertaining people?

Yes. Well, because to me, laughter— when some— when you say something and someone else laughs, That laugh is as if to say, I see you. I agree. I see that too. We're here together on the planet, and we're having a connection. And that is like— and when you can have a connection with 500 people at once, and you see that they see you, and you have something in common, that is like—

And they feel the same way you do.

Yes, exactly.

I didn't understand what it was. That's exactly what it was.

It is floating.

Do you feel that way too? I felt like I was just gonna float away. I couldn't believe it. And it was happening in real time. But one of the things that happened too is the thing I said had been said by a friend of mine backstage, and I kind of borrowed her. And I went backstage afterwards, and I said, I'm so sorry. I got total credit for your humor. And she said to me, everybody needs a writer. And I went— just totally let me off the hook. But it's just interesting, the relationship between the two. performer and the writer. Because you can use— do you have notebooks filled with good ideas?

I used to.

You used to? What happened?

I started gardening. And then—

We have to talk about gardening because that's an obsession.

This shit, and I have to— am I allowed to curse? This is a full-time job.

Gardening? No, it's years of a full-time job.

It's years of a full-time job. That I love. But like, I made— I had to make a vat of sauce this morning because the tomatoes were about to turn, and I had to— so I, you know, I canned 7 jars this morning of it.

Oh, wow.

And I canned 7 jars the day before. I'm canning, I'm canning. And you picked beans. I picked you some beans, but that was easy compared to the canning. My God, the canning. The pickling. The pickling alone.

And this is one of your great talents, pickling. And you need to give me your pickling recipe one of these days.

I've arrived at a brine that I like.

What do you pickle?

I pickle—

Beside ourselves.

Thank you so much. True.

Whoa.

The cucumber beetles ate my cucumbers this year. They died. So I have pickled a lot of fennel and radishes and beets and stuff like that.

Pickled fennel sounds good. That sounds great.

I should have brought you down.

I love fennel.

One day.

I'll be snooping around your garden. If there's somebody snooping around the garden with the deer and the rabbits, it'll be me. So you've created some of the most iconic characters ever. Some of them are voiceovers, some of them are real. But like Miss Frizzle and Weird Barbie. Oh my God. How do you even start with those?

Well, though, like, it's— I'm— I think I'm kind of niche. I know that.

I can—

I can say that about myself. And I feel that I'm a little niche. And so, when a character comes along that is larger than life, a Miss Frizzle, a weird Barbie, I say, okay, thank God. This I can do in my sleep. The other thing, if I try to act normal, that doesn't work so well. But so, when an opportunity comes along to play you know, the equivalent of Pippi Longstocking grown up. Someone who's just outrageous, not of this world, over the top. That, I feel, is like easy pickings.

I can do this in my sleep, right? Why do I feel like you were just doing Kay McKinnon?

It was so easy.

You know, look, one thing I have to say is comedy, I think, is the hardest form of entertainment. I mean, Jeffrey and I were asked to give a talk at somebody's retirement party in Paris.

And the two of us— Oh, wow.

Made the disastrous mistake to decide to roast our friend. We thought it was hilarious. But oh my God, not— nobody laughed. Nobody said a word. And you're in the middle of it, halfway through, and we're looking at each other going, do we just split? Or do we keep going? What do you do? Have you ever bombed?

I've bombed.

And what do you do about it?

I bombed in France.

You bombed in France?

So—

We've bombed in the same place. We had so much in common.

I was watching a soccer match. Sorry, football. Sorry, football.

Whatever they call it.

At a restaurant in Paris, and the Swiss team hadn't scored anything. And the server came over and was talking, and I said, I made a joke that didn't even make sense in English. The joke in English was, the Swiss really are neutral, aren't they? Which is a stretch in English. But I said, les Suisses sont vraiment neutres, ouais?

Oh, you said it in French?

Yes, but neutre.

That's not the word for neutral.

Yes, I don't know what it means, but it didn't land. It landed very wrong. And I could tell from his face. And he was like, quoi? Quoi? And I was like, les Suisses sont vraiment neutres, ouais? Oui, parce que le football. I love your impersonation of a French person. I had to say, never mind, eventually, in English, with my tail between my legs.

I went to a hairdresser once in France, and he said, would you— in French, he said, would you like your hair straight or curly? And I thought, oh, what the hell? It's New Year's Eve. How about curly? So he did my hair curly, and I wanted to say to him, And I did it in French. I wanted to say, when my husband sees me, he's gonna say, kiss me quick before my wife gets here. So I just, I said what I thought.

I said—

Yes. Baisez-moi vite en avance que ma femme arrive. And the hairdresser was just horrified. And that night I went, I was like, I said something wrong, but I have no idea what. That night I went out with friends and asked, what did I say? And they said, he said, Fuck me quick before my wife gets here. So you get it a little wrong, and it's just totally wrong. Oh my God.

Well, I'm laughing.

The things we do. The things we do in foreign languages.

I say, oh, that's funny.

Hey there, it's Sue Bird. You know the drill— another week, another new episode of Bird's Eye View. This week, I'm thrilled to be joined by Australia's most notable women's basketball player and my former Seattle Storm teammate, Lauren Jackson. She talks about the pros and cons of going pro at 16, the Opals' legendary FIBA World Cup run in 2006, and how her role on a team differs between international tournaments and the WNBA. Plus, in Sue's View, I answer your questions about the UConn documentary that came out. Make sure to check out Bird's Eye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

When you were in school, I think you were like me. You were a science nerd. I was a science nerd too. Oh, yes.

You were?

I was such a science nerd. I just—

What kind of science nerd?

I would do projects for, like, science projects. And the boys in my class would go to the library for a year and study, like, cancer. And I hated going to the library. So I would stay home and I'd go, okay, I'm gonna do a science experiment with 12 mice. And I got 12 mice.

Uh-huh.

And I had them compete against each other. But yet they had 2 teams. So you had to differentiate them 'cause they run together. So one of them, dyed purple. I would pick them up by their tails and dip them in purple dye, and they'd come up like this. And so I had 2 teams, the white team and the purple team, and I would compete them against each other.

In what way?

It was a science experiment to see how quickly they would learn something. That was, it was crazy.

Oh my goodness.

But I would win all the science projects, and the boys would hate me 'cause they'd work so hard on them. Year after year, I'd win the science project. But I always thought science was fun. And I, obviously you did too.

Wow, you pitted mice against one another in a battle to the death. I did a similar— I too did an experiment with vermin.

With vermin?

I had to—

Are you calling my mice vermin?

Well, no, but in some circles, you know, they're not, you know, the hero of the tale. Anyway, I—

I have to say, they made a jailbreak once, and my mother— they were running all over the house. My mother wasn't that happy about it. So what kind of vermin did you have?

Cockroaches.

Cockroaches?

I did an experiment with Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

What's a hissing cockroach? It obviously hisses.

You love them. They're 3 inches long and they're wingless, thank God. And when you touch them, they blow air out of little holes in their side and they make a hissing sound. So my experiment was to see if they would respond with a hiss to anything other than a tactile stimulus. And it was a bit of a bullshit experiment, but I played a vacuum cleaner for them to see if that would make them hiss, and I sort of turned the lights on and off. Turns out that didn't. It's just when you touch them. Anyway, I—

But it was an important experiment because you need to know. Well, it was groundbreaking research, obviously. You just never know. You never know. You could have discovered something about hissing cockroaches.

Well, for cancer. It was for cancer. Anyway, no, no. I— no.

What happened to the cockroaches?

Well, after the experiment was done, I went to my beloved mother and I said, Mom, can I keep these cockroaches in my suburban bedroom? And she said—

Oh, God.

Yes, because I already had an iguana. So I was halfway to jungle status. And so the cockroaches came in. So at one point, I had hamsters, a salamander, cockroaches, and an iguana, and a cat.

In the same room?

in a room, and that was chaos. And, you know—

Was the rule that they could stay in the room as long as they never left the room?

Yes.

So that was their whole world?

Yes.

But I did—

they were in a tank, but I would take them out and sort of play with them like Barbies.

We had to be the weirdest kids around. I don't know anybody else that—

You with your purple mice.

Purple mice and missing cockroaches.

And your cockroaches. Oh, Sharon, it's you!

Sharon, you're pregnant! And you had an iguana?

Oh, yes.

Did I catch that?

Yes, yes.

And did the iguana have a name?

Willie.

Willie the iguana. Of course, everybody would name their iguana Willie. And they didn't eat each other?

They didn't meet, but they must have been chatting about me while I was at school.

This bitch.

What would they say? Can you believe she's trapping us in this suburban bedroom? We're jungle animals, for Christ's sake. Let us out. I hate this girl.

They didn't even They didn't know there was a wider world out there.

No.

You know, I have— my whole garden is all fenced in, and there are rabbits in there. And the other day I was thinking, I feel so badly for the rabbits. All they know is my garden. They're born in there, they die in there. For, like, years, that's all they know. And somebody said, it's actually not so bad because the foxes can't get in and eat them. So at least they're safe. So they were safe in your room.

They're lucky.

Right? The lucky rabbits.

They're lucky to be in Ina Garten's garden. My God.

I'm not sure they get the same thing.

Other rabbits wish they were in Ina Garten's garden.

So you and I have a secret crush, and it's the same one. Mel Brooks. Didn't you used to watch Mel Brooks? Have you ever met him?

I've never met Mel Brooks.

He is hilarious. He is absolutely so funny. When he was doing and my friend Susan Stroman was the director. He lived in Watermill, and he'd just lost his wife, Anne, who used to cook for him.

Oh.

And so, he would come for dinner.

And it was just—

it was just so wonderful to spend an evening with him. I can't even tell you. And on the way out, he would go look through my cookbook, and he'd go, this chicken with 40 cloves of garlic looks really good. And I'm like, if you come next Saturday, I'll make it for you. I don't think it was my company he was coming back for. I think it was the chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. It was just—

you would love it.

The two of you would get along like a house on fire.

Oh, I just— we watched The Producers in my house, the film, once a week.

Once a week?

For my whole childhood, we watched that.

Oh, fabulous.

And I have memorized every line of that film.

He's just extraordinary. And he just turned 100, and he's going to outlive both of us. I'm sure about that.

I hope so.

So after 10 years at SNL, You decide you're gonna move to the country. Is that what happened?

Yes.

So, is it, like, cozy and warm with a big fire, or is it like The Shining? Or is it like aliens in the woods?

It's cozy and warm with a little fire and a big garden. And there is a town nearby that is known for its alien abductions, but not the one that I live in, per se.

Oh, my God. I think the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life is you and Meryl Streep for the 50th anniversary of SNL, Being mother and daughter, having been abducted by aliens.

I mean—

Can I toast that?

No.

That will live on forever with the producers.

Was that fun? That was so interesting because they were like, who do you think you would like to ask to be in the sketch with you for this 50th anniversary show? And I was like, I don't know, Meryl Streep. It's everybody's first answer. And then they were like, And she did it. And they said, Meryl is— Meryl will do it. And I was like, oh my God, not Meryl! I'm not ready. I'm not ready.

I'm not ready.

And then they said, call Meryl and just tell her a little bit about the sketch. And I said, okay.

She said yes without even knowing what it was about?

She knew roughly what it was about, but they wanted me to discuss the particulars with her. And I said, okay, I'll do it. I'll call Meryl Streep.

Fine.

Boop, boop, beep, boop, beep, boop, boop, boop. Hello? And of course, we talked about gardening because that's the magic of SNL. You get to—

Yeah. Work with the best.

Do the silliest things with the greatest living actress. And it's just— that's funny. Now, that's a juxtaposition. That's funny.

Exactly. But also, she has an incredible sense of humor.

An incredible sense of humor.

So she's just— she can be serious. She can be funny. She can be anything. I mean, she can create any character ever.

She turned to me and she was like, are my pants hiked up enough? Can you see enough of what's going on? And I said, give them one more yank. Let's really get up there, Mare. That was just great.

I mean, it was just— to watch the other actors while you're doing it is just unbelievable. So funny. So fabulous. Okay, so tell me about your garden.

Okay, it's my 4th season.

Yeah.

It's expanded. I've dug up more and more of my lawn every year.

That's what you do. That's what you do. That's what gardeners do. You plant it over the winter and then you dig up more. And then at the end of the summer you go, why did I do that?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So what is your garden?

I have big plans for next year. What's it like? There's not gonna be one fucking patch of grass left. I've got, raised beds. I've got rows. I've got a terraced section with rows. And I just, I learn so much every year. And I've been doing a lot of preserving, as I said, because if you grow that many tomatoes, you can't let them just fall.

So you make sauce, or do you do other things with them?

Yes.

I'm on my 20th jar of sauce I canned this morning. And can I even eat all that sauce? Yes, I can. Yeah.

You can give them away. I can eat that in a week.

Come on.

I actually found I only grow cherry tomatoes because the big tomatoes, when you go out there, every single one has one bite out of it. Like a raccoon or a—

What's eating this?

I don't know. Maybe it's Jeffrey. I haven't seen him. Oh, I bet it is. But one bite. Can't you just eat the entire tomato and leave the rest? One bite. And I can't eat a tomato that has a bite out of it. I just can't.

Right.

Whose mouth was on that? Exactly.

Did they brush their teeth? I don't think so.

So you have a new book. It's called The Jungle of— let me see if I can say this— Caribana.

I wanted to write something that celebrated the bizarre creatures that we see all around us. Obviously, I have a taste for the strange. My cockroaches, my iguana, et cetera. I've always been obsessed with how nature is so bizarre that you really don't have to write about magic. You can just write about—

What exists.

Science, and that's weird enough. And so I just, over a period of 12 or so years, was thinking about this story about 3 sort of lost children who become and mentored— is that a word? It's not a word. Who become the mentees of a mad scientist and they fight the bad guys. And I just, I love thinking about the world of the 1890s, the world of Alexander von Humboldt, the naturalist who's got 2,000 species named after him or something. He was this explorer. I just love—

Seriously? Yes, yes.

Wow.

I love thinking about a time when not everything had been cataloged, photographed, and put into AI already, when there was still magic and wonder in the real world.

Discovery.

And discovery, exactly.

If you were going to have something named after you, what would it be?

Some bug, some weird bug.

A bug.

I love that. Yeah.

A hissing cockroach, say.

Oh my goodness.

Where do you even get a hissing cockroach?

You know, the school obtained them for me, and I don't want And Willie the iguana, where did he come from? Petland.

Petland?

Petland. And then he went to Boca.

He went to Boca? He retired?

He retired to Boca. He retired to Boca, yes.

That's very nice.

Yes.

Because Jeffrey, actually, when we were dating, he lived in Florida. And he sent me an alligator in a box.

Come again?

Jeffrey sent me an alligator. No, he didn't send me flowers and chocolates. He sent me an alligator.

And what were you supposed to do with that? It was about this big.

I have no idea.

But I put it in my mother's wash—

like her laundry sink. You'd arrive in the morning, and it was just like this. I was like, oh my God, the alligator's dead. And then the next afternoon, he was just swimming around. We had to feed him raw meat. Oh, it was just— And then one day, he just disappeared. I have no idea what happened to the alligator. And I always suspected, but I never said it out loud, that my mother had something to do with the crime. Maybe she wanted to do the laundry.

Oh my God.

And there was an alligator in there.

And this is the relationship that people look up to as an example of what true— It got better after that. True decades of true love looks like.

So everybody has a sliding doors moment, like the moment in your life where, with serendipity, everything changed. What was that moment for you?

I was— I was so afraid to audition for Saturday Night Live because it was everything that I ever wanted. It was the only thing that mattered to me. It was everything that I'd been working for since my childhood.

Wow.

And I was so afraid that if I really did it and it didn't happen, then I would— where would I go from there?

Wow.

So I thought that I would throw the audition.

You were afraid you would throw it? No, I thought— You decided to?

I decided that I would throw the audition.

And so what did you do?

I said to myself, I'm going to throw the audition. And because I was so afraid of what it would mean if I got the job, of what it would mean if I didn't get the job.

Both things were just—

seemed so And so, I thought best to just— I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready to be done with this. I'm not ready to have this happen. I just—

Ah! How old were you?

28.

So, yeah. So, this is get serious time.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then I was speaking to a friend over the phone, and she said, I think you might want to not throw the audition because haven't you been working for this since your childhood? And don't you want to see what would happen if you really— tried your best. And I said, damn. Fuck you! But of course, she was right.

And I— Well, it's funny because your instinct was to not want it too much and to throw it so you didn't have to deal with the success of doing it or the pressure of doing it.

Or the failure of doing it.

Or the failure of doing it. Yeah. So it was, you were keeping the decision yours by throwing it rather than giving them the choice, the power Choose you or not. So what happened?

I decided that I would, with this one precious opportunity that I had been working for since my childhood, that I would do my absolute best. And I did.

And what was the audition? What did you have to do?

Oh, it's just 5 minutes of characters and impressions and stuff. And so I worked on it really hard, and I practiced it in front of people, and I asked their opinion, and I worked harder on that 5 minutes than I had on most things in my life. And then afterwards, And afterwards, I just sort of waited and hoped and prayed.

So then you got the call? Yes.

Who called? I think it was one of the producers, or maybe it was Lorne himself. I forget. And I was living in LA at the time. Disaster. Anyway, I was walking on the sidewalk, the sun beating down. The call came, and I I sank to my knees, not because I had to, but because I wanted to be able to say, years later, I sank to my knees. I wanted to tell you that on this podcast. I thought, if I'm ever in Ina Garten's apartment— For her podcast. I want to be able to tell her that I sank to my knees when I got the call.

So I'm glad I did. I'm glad you did too. And everybody on the planet is glad you went to SNL.

It's just so wonderful.

So what did you read as a kid?

I read a lot. I read a lot of Pippi Longstocking, and I read— I loved tales of misfits. I mean, most of Most of the books in the middle grade genre, which these books are, are about misfits because the genre itself deals with questions of identity.

And everybody feels like a misfit in that genre. I mean, maybe there's one person who feels like the most popular girl in the class, but everybody else is a misfit, right?

And I find that in real life, even the popular girl—

Doesn't know that. Is a misfit.

When she goes home, And is going to sleep and is staring at the wall is a misfit. I think that— so for me, it's my favorite literary genre, and I still read a lot of middle grade because it deals with questions of that feeling of being a misfit and questions of, what am I going to do about it? Am I going to lean into that, or am I going to pull back and then become a politician? Am I going to— Or what am I going to do with this person that I'm discovering that I am? Am I going to celebrate it, or am I going to try to fit in and hide that which I know makes me unique? And I think that's the question of our— that's the work of our entire lives. And it begins when we're 12.

That's really true. It really is. Because I think when you're at that age, your instinct is to try and fit in so people like you. But I I think that you found people liked you because of your sense of humor. So you could be quirky and still fit in.

Yeah.

Fit in, right? Am I right?

Well, they didn't like me. Yeah, no, I didn't— like, I was not— I don't know if you can believe this. I was not the most popular girl in my grade.

Nobody was. No one was.

No one was. Not even the most popular girl was the most popular girl. But I was really not the most popular girl. But they did laugh. when I did impressions and voices. And so, I leaned into that and then eventually made a career of it.

And how wonderful that they did, that you found a way to have a connection with people, and it became your career. That's who you are. It's just wonderful. And I will toast to that. To Kate McKinnon always being the most popular girl.

And you are.

Nobody knows how gorgeous you are. You're always playing some older guy or some woman, some older woman, some frumpy person. And in person, you're just gorgeous.

Thank you. I appreciate that. You're stunning. You're radiant.

This is Kate McKinnon, embarrassed. I love you too.

Happy Hour is hosted by me, Ina Garten. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman, Susie Lechtenberg, Allie Jaffe Ray, and Deborah Davis. Kay Tyler is a contributing producer, and Justine Domme, a senior producer. Mika Pollin-Bonn is our associate producer. Tim Fernandez is the video editor, with sound recording by Joe Plourde. Our camera operators for this episode are Joe Valenzuela and Zoe Gregorick. Music for the show is by Pink Martini. Special thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe. Happy Hour is produced by Goodway Productions, And as a Vox Media podcast.