“I was just never discouraged from doing something wacky like trying to be a comedian.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Comedy is a tool of togetherness. It’s a way of putting your arm around someone, pointing at something, and saying, ‘Isn’t it funny that we do that?’ It’s a way of reaching out.”
― Kate McKinnon
“A good impression is sort of a juxtaposition of disparate elements.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I have always had eclectic obsessions: astrophysics, music theory, the Mongol empire and its history, and the history of the Silk Road, to name a few.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I tried for a short time to be something I wasn’t, and had no success with it. It’s a practical solution to just be yourself.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I feel like science and art are cousins.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I don’t sleep enough, and it does… what is the opposite of wonders… horrors. It does horrors for my skin.”
― Kate McKinnon
“It’s such an insult that foul gas comes out of a hole in our butt with a sound to announce itself. It’s the ultimate bad thing about being a person.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Even if you’re an angry, intense person, you also have to have intense joy about life and intense feelings about the world.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I’m a very low-key person, but for some reason, I like to act out.”
― Kate McKinnon
“You’ve gotta believe in yourself, and you just have to work harder at it than you’ve ever worked at anything before in your life. And if you keep doing that and keep believing in yourself, great things do happen.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I really like collections of things. I love antique botanical prints with a bunch of different weeds and seeds.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I pride myself on being tragically uncool.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I always wanted to live alone for a month in a lakeside cabin. In my fantasy, I enter a state of perfect peace and grow my own kale and stuff, but in real life, I think I might be very bored after four days.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I was an umpire at little league softball games. I only lasted a few games because I wasn’t one hundred percent clear on all the rules.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I found I could speak louder and was more comfortable if I was doing it in someone else’s crazy voice.”
― Kate McKinnon
“For an impression, I just find that I can do a lot of the people I love without much research, because I’ve already watched hours and hours of them on video and it seeped into my brain while I wasn’t thinking about it.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I’ve been a big astrophysics nut since I was 12. I have always had a real soft spot for the bizarreness of quantum mechanics. But I gave up on being a scientist in high school – I’m just not that good at math.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I only come up with things when I am talking to myself, which I do constantly. The sidewalk and the subway are the best places for this. I speak at full volume and then laugh at myself if I like what I just said.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I was very serene, and I still am, until I start talking in another voice, then suddenly I have a lot of volume and I’m frantic. But I didn’t want to be one of those people who’s always talking in accents in real life, so I started doing sketch comedy.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I worked as a telemarketer for an SAT-prep company. That was the worst of it, because I had to call people in post-Katrina New Orleans and offer them this very, very expensive SAT class. And I’m not even a good salesman.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I love Jared Hess’ movies. He’s such a weirdo and such a nice, funny guy.”
― Kate McKinnon
“What’s not to love about a crazy cat lady? You have to be very giving to be a crazy cat lady.”
― Kate McKinnon
“’SNL’ can be a stressful environment, and I am panicking constantly, but I guess I keep it pretty internal.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Progress, real progress, makes me cry harder than anything. When the world itself grows.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I love the produce section at the grocery store.”
― Kate McKinnon
“For ‘Ghostbusters,’ the thing that makes it such an amazing franchise and an amazing idea is that it is adds the element of physics and technology. It’s not just about ghosts. Who the heck came up with that? It is such a good idea, such a unique combination of stuff from different genres. Ghosts and sci fi.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Everyone has some kind of light inside them.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I started watching ‘SNL’ when I was thirteen or so; those were the Molly Shannon/Ana Gasteyer/Cheri Oteri years.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I grew up with a pet iguana named Willy. We had a very contentious relationship. It turns out that iguanas are not meant to live in suburban homes.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I do get approached occasionally, but not a ton. I’m unrecognizable because I’m coated in cat hair and sweat. And there’s a sort of yeti quality to my presence… so I don’t think that people can see the face.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I lost $6 in Atlantic City once and said, ‘Never again.’”
― Kate McKinnon
“I’ve never had a couch that needed to be cleaned or learned how to couch-clean in general. That feels too grown-up.”
― Kate McKinnon
“When I was on ‘The Big Gay Sketch Show’ I thought, ‘Well, this is going well now, but then when it’s over I’ll just be a barista.’”
― Kate McKinnon
“I find donating stuff to be the biggest hassle.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Getting recognized on the street is fine, but I never really wanted to be famous. I just wanted to have mastered the art of sketch comedy.”
― Kate McKinnon
“If you asked me to seriously kiss someone on a screen, I would be very uncomfortable. But I will lick any part of your face.”
― Kate McKinnon
“There was just a lot of comedy on the TV in the house, and my parents are both very funny.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I just like playing unique characters that I love.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Nothing makes me laugh more than farting.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I hate the feeling of having hair on my neck.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I admire my boss, Lorne Michaels. He never stops producing. I think, for him, comedy is a tool of compassion, a way of rallying people together and saying, ‘Guys, isn’t the world bonkers? Aren’t we all just trying our best?’ There’s a tenderness in everything he does.”
― Kate McKinnon
“To be employed in the entertainment industry is a miracle.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I have no skills. I’m bad at most things.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Even when Facebook came out, and I was in college, I found myself never putting anything on it.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I hope to be on ‘SNL’ as long as they’ll let me.”
― Kate McKinnon
“The first impression that I liked doing was an impression of Cheri Oteri’s Barbara Walters impression on ‘SNL.’ I found that I could mimic that pretty well, and people got a kick out of that.”
― Kate McKinnon
“That’s the one criteria I have – I can’t do an impression of someone I don’t like.”
― Kate McKinnon
“It’s hard to write a comedy sketch.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Some people look at movies and think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so amazing.’ But to me, I look at a politician or a scientist and think, ‘They’re creating the content of humanity.’”
― Kate McKinnon
“Comedy has become, I think, a very important branch of public intellectualism. But it still ain’t Washington.”
― Kate McKinnon
“My cat does this thing where he’s so happy to see me that he repeatedly smashes his face into my face and purrs like a literal pig.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I work with some of the funniest writers in the country.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I’ve been told I’m a little bit eccentric.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I love doing impressions of politicians because the task is always to imagine the private lives of these people whose job it is to project an image of staunch, unflinching leadership and grace, and that’s just not how human beings, in their heart of hearts, work.”
― Kate McKinnon
“You can’t make the audience fall in love with a character you don’t like.”
― Kate McKinnon
“When I heard that Paul Feig was directing an all-female ‘Ghostbusters,’ I was prepared to do anything to be a part of this, to be a part of what sounded like an incredible project.”
― Kate McKinnon
“If I had my druthers, I would be a brain in a jar, with a burlap skirt around the cart I’m on – I don’t attend to my physical being much.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I like to connect with people and suss them out. There’s no better way than seeing how they react if you just bear into them.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I can relate to pushing yourself because you want to help and move culture toward justice.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I think that any sort of fantasy or sci fi that is grounded in something that could ostensibly be real – ‘Jurassic Park’ being my favorite example – is that much more prescient because it means that much more. Maybe one day, what if?”
― Kate McKinnon
“I’m a physical comedian first – and I’m a woman before that.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I will not hear a word against him. I love my Bieber!”
― Kate McKinnon
“My mom watches really obscure stuff on IFC. She’s a real comedy fan. She knows everything that’s going on.”
― Kate McKinnon
“My most frequent collaborators at S.N.L. are the incredibly gifted writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider!”
― Kate McKinnon
“It just feels unnatural to me to broadcast anything other than the character I’ve created.”
― Kate McKinnon
“If I had Instagram, it would be pictures of my son, who is a cat.”
― Kate McKinnon
“It’s much easier for me to do an impression of someone real, because you and the audience begin with a baseline understanding of this person’s life. And then if you subvert that in any way, it’s a little comedy surprise.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Basically hated everything made in the ’80s, music television – it was really about the ’90s for me. ‘Encino Man’ was a big hit. ‘Robin Hood: Men in Tights.’”
― Kate McKinnon
“My couch is made of cat’s hair. The cushions have been obscured, and it’s made of salt-and-pepper fur. I can’t have visitors. I can’t ask people to sit on that couch because they become implicated in the furriness of it, and they’re walking around, and it’s not fair to people.”
― Kate McKinnon
“It’s hard not to be the straight man when Zach Galifianakis is there. He’s such a delightfully bizarre creature. Everything he does is so surprising. He’s such a live wire. It’s just so exciting to watch.”
― Kate McKinnon
“’Mean Girls’ stands the test of time as one of the greatest comedies ever produced. I’ve seen it way too many times, and I just think it’s the most brilliant thing ever written. I love it so much.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I can’t do choreographed movement. It has to come from my heart… and my pelvis.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I have only had positive interactions in relation to my impressions of people, which I’m happy because I do them with love, and I hope that the people who I do them of really like them.”
― Kate McKinnon
“Maddie Ziegler is the most amazing dancer I’ve ever seen, and I’m so obsessed with her. I was obsessed with her even before she did her first Sia video.”
― Kate McKinnon
“You just have to work super hard, and if you have a passion, that’s the most beautiful thing in life, and you just have to bust out and do it, baby!”
― Kate McKinnon
“I had this dream in my head of, if I got hired by ‘SNL, what that moment would be like. And I dreamed that I would, like, collapse on the sidewalk and cry to the heavens. I got this call, and it didn’t happen naturally. But I did it anyway because I wanted to have that moment. So I did collapse.”
― Kate McKinnon
“I love gross kissing. I think it’s the most fun thing to do.”
― Kate McKinnon
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