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RHINEBECK, NY – It’s hard to think of Cecily Strong and not remember the enthusiastic television characters she played. If you are a fan of “Saturday Night Live”, her exuberant performance as an exuberant Jeanine Pirro hums “My Way” while immersing himself in a wine tank. Or if you’re watching him on the Apple TV+ musical comedy “Schmigadoon!”, you think he’s praising modern-day show tunes. the pleasures of corn pudding or make love to a suitor.
The actors, of course, aren’t their characters, and Strong tried to explain that, as much as he was afraid of the real-life confident, can I talk to the manager types, they weren’t. t is one of them. As he said a few weeks ago, “Every time someone performs in public, it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. But when I say I’m shy or introverted people don’t think so. I’m okay – but I am, you know.”
Therefore, it is surprising that Strong, who does not consider himself a confessor, wrote a personal memoir, and moreover, his book is not a narrative of his show business career, but a candid account of his reflective life. at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
moment, “It’s All Over Soon” It will be published on August 10 by Simon & Schuster. He occasionally explores his time on “SNL,” where he has been in the cast since 2012. However, it begins with her learning in January 2020. 30-year-old cousin Owen He was given hours to live before he died of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
A few weeks later, Strong discovers that a man she’s recently started dating has a fever that turns out to be a symptom of coronavirus. Shortly after that, she and her two friends prepare to escape to an Airbnb rental company in the Hudson Valley, buying a salad spinner, a garlic press, a yoga mat from her Manhattan apartment. just a few weeks.
For Strong, 37, the book is an opportunity to own these episodes and show them to their audience without fear of being judged.
Looking back at the circumstances that led to the book’s creation, “Who has time to be ashamed right now?” Said. He thought for a moment and then added: “I mean, I guess we have all the time in the world, but why are we wasting the time we’re stuck with?”
At lunch at a Mexican restaurant here in late June, Strong showed off his rainbow-adorned nails and a sharper sense of humor than he knew on “SNL.”
As she prepared to discuss some of her deeply personal experiences, she ordered a chips and salsa and said, “I’m going to cry now and blame the spice.”
She didn’t shed tears, but shared some bitter stories. He grew up in prosperous Oak Park, Ill., where his parents divorced when he was in elementary school, his brother struggled with ADHD and spent time in a child psychiatric ward, and was expelled from a high school after he was found to have marijuana in him. backpack. Strong has struggled with anxiety and depression for much of her life, she writes in her book, and spent years in a perpetual relationship with a physically abusive boyfriend.
Some of Strong’s most compelling anecdotes in “This Will End Soon” are filled with the frustration and injustice of loss. After playing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in an “SNL” draftStrong recalls a friend from Kalamazoo, whose car was struck by a train. Or she remembers when in 2018 she helped her cousin Owen get a VIP ticket to an “SNL” broadcast hosted by “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman. deaths from colon cancer last august.
Strong said that his purpose in writing the book was not to develop sympathy, but to cover events that he perhaps never fully addressed, “life-defining things that I didn’t realize at the time, or maybe things I did. He was ashamed, but he didn’t want to be.”
“SNL” career, unforgettable impressions and faceless “Weekend Update” characters, thriving, and last month earned her second Emmy nomination as a supporting actress in a comedy series. Strong said that in recent years he wanted to find ways to express himself outside of the show as well.
Without highlighting a particular role or performance, she said, “I wanted to do something different from a sketch someone else wrote, and people maybe think it’s my voice, but it’s not my voice.”
Even “Schmigadoon!” Even some of the accolades he’s gotten for it. It evoked mixed feelings. “People, nobody knows you can do this, they’ve never seen this side of you,” he said. “And I, too, wait a minute, what do you really think of me?” said.
Lorne Michaels, creator and longtime executive producer of “SNL,” said she always saw Strong as “a very special person,” but someone who showed inner tenacity.
Michaels said Strong embodied the values he saw in his casting from Chicago, “because Chicago faces both shores and isn’t very impressed.” She said she was trustworthy in her instincts and firm in her choices: “You can’t really make her do something she doesn’t want to do.”
Strong said he hesitated to write a book, but felt compelled to keep track of his experiences when he began quarantine in March 2020. Logistical difficulties and panic attacks got in the way, and he finally got his way in a day where he wrote several books. Hours before he started, he spilled a bag of oyster shells and shredded lettuce on the floor of his apartment. “So I need to take a break from writing a little longer,” he said with some relief.
After Strong moved out of Manhattan, he was able to work more productively, often writing during the day, then listening to a housemate read passages aloud at dinner.
Longtime friend Kevin Aeh, who lived with her during the pandemic, said she didn’t mind being a character in her memories. “This is my time capsule from that year, too,” he said.
Aeh said Strong was already in touch with her own feelings about loneliness and grief when the pandemic began, and the stories she shares in the book can help connect readers with similar experiences.
“A lot of people lost their people in the last year,” he said. “We all spent time confused and scared. Even though he was confused and scared like the rest of us, it was a field he was in, and I think that made it easier for him to write about.”
Leda Strong, the author’s cousin and sister of Owen Strong, said that although she had some concerns about the memoir at first, she felt it served a greater purpose.
“The story of my brother Owen will be told and people will recognize him as a person,” he said. “At a certain point it overrides any other concern. It’s not really about me – it’s telling the story of Cecily, and as part of that, my brother becomes immortal.”
Eventually, Cecily Strong’s TV career began to intrude on her idyllic literary retreat. He suffered because of his dedication to “Schmigadoon!”, filmed in Vancouver last fall amid severe pandemic protocols.
“It was my dream job and I said no a few times because I was so scared,” she said. “I was afraid of being quarantined again, I was afraid of this isolation. What if something happens to my family and I’m behind a closed border?”
Strong was confused when he returned to “SNL” with its already ongoing season. “I felt like I was screwing up every social interaction I had,” she said.
He recalled a moment from a broadcast’s closing credits farewell when he stated that they were dressed similarly to Lauren Holt, a cast member who just finished its first season.
Strong’s voice filled with sadness as he continued. “He said, I can change, and I said, oh my God, what have I done to you?” He said strong. “What did you think I meant? Please no.”
In his memoirs, he writes about battling “SNL” this year, against coronavirus restrictions and fears of not being funny as he splits his time between the cities of Manhattan and New York. When Michaels needed time with her family to commemorate herself or Owen’s birthday, she said it was easy to provide.
“He won,” Michaels said. “This season was probably the hardest for him ever.”
Now that Strong is wrapping up its ninth season on the show, some of his collaborators are working on the assumption that he gave his last performance as a cast member.
“SNL” senior writer Bryan Tucker, who has worked with Strong on the Jeanine Pirro segments for the “Weekend Update”, said the wine-filled “My Way” sketch was deliberately written to give Strong a victory lap.
“It’s a very special part of the show and I wanted to write something that was a big send off to it,” Tucker said. “I thought I’d never get a chance to do something like this again.”
However, Strong said his own plans for the upcoming “SNL” season have not been resolved. “I’m still thinking,” he said. “There were times throughout the year when I felt like a fifth-year senior and I was just wandering around. Then there would be moments that felt so good.”
“There are things I want to do and I want to be open to them. Great if I’m there – great if I’m not there. I just want you to feel like it’s the right thing.”
Michaels said he and Strong were “talking”.
“My hope is that he will come back,” she said. “What I tell him and believe is that I don’t think he’s finished yet.”
Strong said the skit was memorable to him, whether or not the number “My Way” proved to be his swan song. He also said that the tank he eventually immersed himself in was actually “filled with diluted grape juice, but it was very hot – I appreciated that.”
“Security man, don’t open your eyes there because the juice looked like it was going to burn, and I was like, OK, thank you, I hadn’t planned this.” “Then I splashed it in my eyes to test it and said, you didn’t have to do that.”
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