Molly Shannon Talks Mary Katherine Gallagher, Will Ferrell and Rats on ‘Late Night’

Molly Shannon Turns One Late-Night Visit Into Pure Superstar Joy

How we adore Molly Shannon. The Emmy-nominated actress, comedian and bestselling author returned to Late Night with Seth Meyers and somehow turned a standard promotional stop into a glorious ramble involving Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, a hostile media trainer, Harry Houdini, a shelter dog and enough rat material to make most publicists quietly leave the building.

Shannon visited to discuss Netflix’s new golf comedy The Hawk, premiering July 16, in which she plays Stacy Hawkins opposite Ferrell’s washed-up golf legend Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins. The on-screen marriage requires Shannon to unleash some magnificently detailed threats at him, which is harder than it sounds because the two have adored one another for roughly 30 years.

Ferrell called Shannon while she was walking through her neighborhood and casually asked whether she would play his wife and “just, like, yell” at him. She agreed immediately. The only problem was emotional: she loves him so much that properly screaming at him required actual acting.

The friendship began before either of them became a household name. Ferrell was taking classes at The Groundlings while Shannon worked across the street at the Melrose Baking Company. Their mutual friend Patricia Cotter insisted they shared the same sense of humor and brought Ferrell into the restaurant, where Shannon waited on him as he ordered a scone and a caffe latte. Thirty years later, they are still making each other laugh—and still willing to bomb together.

Shannon remembers one Saturday Night Live sketch in which she and Ferrell played characters who had each recently lost 100 pounds. The audience gave them absolutely nothing. Rather than panic, the pair silently committed to performing the dead-on-arrival material like the greatest actors who had ever touched a stage. The sketch may have been fun for precisely two people, but Shannon says the shared disaster made her feel even closer to him.

That same refusal to abandon a bit followed them into the press tour for A Night at the Roxbury. Before the film opened, Shannon, Ferrell and Chris Kattan were sent to media training. Asked why audiences should see the movie, Ferrell confidently replied that anyone who bought a ticket would win one million dollars. The trainer stopped the tape, played his answer back and informed them that she did not think it was funny. She was wrong. It was very funny.

Before comedy paid the bills, Shannon worked at several Los Angeles restaurants and quietly studied the future stars passing through. At Cravings, a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston would arrive with perfectly blown-out hair and take her agents to lunch. Shannon watched from the hostess stand, struck by Aniston’s crystal-blue eyes and all-business energy, essentially observing how a superstar moved through a room before the rest of the world knew one had entered.

Molly Shannon Remains Thee Superstar

The gallery catches Shannon revisiting Mary Katherine Gallagher, laughing through old stories and letting the audience settle a very serious wardrobe question.

Molly Shannon revisits her comedy history on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Images via NBC.

Her most iconic physical bit still gives her joy. Shannon says she never tires of striking Mary Katherine Gallagher’s “Superstar!” pose and will perform it in airports whenever someone asks. It feels less like a burden than a yoga stretch because she deliberately wrote material that remains fun to perform.

The origin is sweeter than the pop-culture mythology around it. During the first Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch, Shannon slid back into frame and threw up the pose as a private joke for her friend Deborah Palermo, who always greeted her with, “There’s my little superstar.” A tiny wink between friends became one of the most recognizable gestures in SNL history.

The interview gets even more Molly from there. Caroline Rhea once stopped her in a pet store to reveal that Shannon bears a striking resemblance to magician Harry Houdini. When Meyers first saw the photograph, he assumed it was a playbill announcing Shannon as Houdini—which, frankly, now sounds like a project somebody needs to finance immediately.

Shannon also introduces Junie, the husky her family adopted from a Carson shelter. Junie performed a full charm offensive during her meet-and-greet, tapping around as though pleading, “Pick me.” When the shelter announced over the microphone that Junie had been adopted, only Shannon, her daughter Stella and the dog were there to celebrate. It was small, overly ceremonial and, in Shannon’s telling, perfect.

Then come the rats. Shannon does not want them in her home, but she loves stories about them. A New York subway rat once crawled directly over her flip-flopped foot. Later, while her family dealt with rats in an apartment, her young daughter placed aluminum foil over her little brother’s eyes so the rats would not eat them. Shannon realized her own panic had perhaps communicated the emergency a little too effectively.

That is the Molly Shannon magic: total commitment without self-importance, wild stories delivered with genuine affection and a willingness to find delight in everything from a disastrous sketch to a shelter loudspeaker. The Hollywood Walk of Fame star may now be official, but she has been our superstar for decades.

Watch Molly Shannon Revisit Mary Katherine Gallagher And More

The full Late Night interview includes Shannon’s Will Ferrell origin story, the million-dollar media-training disaster, Junie’s adoption and every gloriously strange rat detour.

Source: Official Late Night with Seth Meyers YouTube; Netflix Tudum.