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Aug 15, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Molly Shannon has become a familiar face to comedy fans over the past two decades, making appearances on dozens of television shows and playing unusual characters in movies such as Year of the Dog, Wet Hot American Summer, and Talladega Nights. She’s probably best known, however, for her seven seasons on Saturday Night Live (from 1995-2001) where she was responsible for characters like Mary Katherine Gallagher, Sally O’Malley (“I’m 50 years old, and I like to kick!”), Circe Nightshade of Goth Talk, and joyologist Helen Madden (“I love it, I love it, I love it!”).

Molly Shannon’s latest feature is Life After Beth. In it she plays Geenie Slocum, a grieving mother whose daughter, Beth (Aubrey Plaza) passed away after being bitten by a poisonous snake. Grief turns to surprise and confusion when Beth shows up on their doorstep days after her funeral. She and her husband (John C. Reilly) do their best to hide their daughter from the outside world, but that task becomes much more difficult when Beth’s boyfriend (Dane DeHaan) finds out she’s returned from the dead.

Molly Shannon spoke with us about making Life After Beth and answered a few burning questions about her time on Saturday Night Live.

Austin Trunick [Under the Radar]: Jeff Baena assembled a spectacular and impressive cast for a first-time director.

Molly Shannon: I know! He really did.

When I think back to the Life After Beth, some of the scenes that really stick out for me are with you and John as the loving, doting parents of a flesh-eating zombie daughter. How would you describe your role to readers who haven’t seen the film yet?

It was really fun acting-wise because we just played it straight. I adored my daughter, and the fact that we lost her, she died—she was bitten by a snake—was just devastating to us. So of course we’re thrilled when she comes back. It’s just like, “Oh my God, this is a miracle!” We don’t want to ask questions, but we just cannot believe she’s back. So we’re celebrating that, but it’s also a complicated time because we’re keeping it secret and keeping her in the house until we get our bearings straight. It was just very fun acting-wise because it was played so straight.

What attracted you to the script?

I’d just thought the script was amazing. I read it and I loved the characters and the story and the themes. I talked to Jeff Baena, the director, and asked him where the idea came from. He said, “Well, I broke up with a girl, and it was such a strange thing because it felt like such a loss, which was strange to me because she was still alive.”

I love the way he works from the inside. He started this script from inside his heart, and wrote out. So, I liked the way her works, and the way he thinks. And then John C. Reilly was the one who initially told me about the script. He said, “Molly, you have to read this script. I want you to play my wife.”

How fun was it filming those scenes with John? You both strike me like you’d be high-energy people on set.

It was so much fun. I told Jeff and Aubrey that it felt like a summer theater camp. We shot it last summer, and it was super creative and fun. On these movies we shoot pretty quickly, but Jeff was so organized. It was so artistic and fun that it felt like a creative arts camp.

John C. Reilly and I have worked together a lot in the past, so that was really fun. It was my first time working with Aubrey and Dane, which was just fantastic. It was one of the most fun times I’ve had on a movie. I had a ball.

There’s a scene you’re in which I won’t spoil for readers, but… I take it you’re not a squeamish person?

Well, no, I’m very squeamish! [Laughs] And that was the bloodiest scene I’ve ever shot. It was crazy. And that was the last day of shooting, and there’s sunlight coming through the window, and Aubrey looked insane… Those were hard scenes to shoot. But I tried to remember how it would feel, physically, if my daughter was in such pain. I always try to think of where I would feel that in my body, and how I would feel about it as a mother. Their pain is your pain, and I thought about that as a performer.

Are you a fan of horror movies?

I’m not a big fan of zombie movie person, but I like some horror movies. Oh, yeah. Like The Shining. Some of the classics I love, like the original Carrie.

Your time on Saturday Night Live coincided with a period in my life where that show was really the highlight of my entire week, where I was old enough to stay up late, but too young to go out of the house. Do people stop you on the street and ask you to do characters?

They do—they stop me on the street. I think that since I do comedy, and the fact that you’re on television and inside people’s living rooms, they feel a warmth and they want to give you a hug … I think it’s very sweet. They do ask me to do characters sometimes, or they’ll ask me to call their friends and do characters or take a picture doing a character. Or, they just want to come up and give you a hug and talk. So yes, I do get stopped. [Laughs]

What’s the life of an SNL alum like? Do old cast mates keep in touch?

They do keep in touch. It’s such a funny thing, because to have gone through that together is such a special experience. It’s like a comedy college. So I do keep in touch with so many of the writers and performers from the show.

So many of your SNL characters were so physical; you were always kicking, or doing splits, or falling through sets. Did you ever injure yourself in any of your sketches?

I would definitely get bruised or cut … I thought at the time I wasn’t really doing that wild of stuff. I really wanted to physically express myself. I was doing it on stage, but I hadn’t seen girls do that on that show for a while, so I was really excited to do that.

I didn’t think much about it, but yes, I would bruise myself and pull muscles. I would sometimes pop a rib. But I would get so into the moment that I wouldn’t feel the pain at all. I wouldn’t feel anything until the next morning when I woke up, and I would see I bruised my leg. But it did sort of scare me because so many people would ask me if I got hurt! I became more cautious later in the years than I was in the beginning. When I started I didn’t think anything of, like, jumping into chairs.

Who were your comedic influences when you were starting out?

My dad would let us watch Three’s Company at dinner, so I loved John Ritter. I loved the way he was with the girls, and his physical comedy, so that’s what I grew up watching. And my dad loved strong female performers like Bette Davis and Elizabeth Taylor, so we would watch things like Butterfield 8 or Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Those kind of women.

I would say Judy Garland was a big influence. I remember seeing [Robert Altman’s] Nashville with my dad and my friend, and I loved that. And The Little Rascals. [laughs] I was just a kid growing up in the 1970s watching regular television.

There’s one thing I’ve always wondered about… To me, the craziest parts of your Mary Katherine Gallagher sketches were always when she went into the dramatic monologues from made-for-TV-movies [i.e. “The Betty Broderick Story” “The House Without A Christmas Tree”] and I’d always assumed those were made up. But then later I looked them up and learned these were all real movies! Were you just always watching a lot of made-for-TV films?

I did watch those. There was one… The Betty Broderick Story. Those were actual movies that I, personally, really liked. I had an old boyfriend who would tease me that my time references were a little off, because some of those movies just played, some were from the 1970s. He’d bust my chops. [Laughs] But those were movies that I loved. I loved ABC After-School Specials.

Mary Katherine Gallagher is an exaggerated version of me growing up, so I used stuff that I really liked myself and was influenced by. And doing a dramatic monologue? It was so silly. [laughs] When I first was interested in acting I didn’t know that I was good at comedy. When I auditioned for drama school and went to NYU, I started off doing dramatic monologues with Southern accents, that had things like, “Oh, mama! Oh, mama!” Like from Agnes of God. So that was my start in show business, doing long dramatic monologues in a Southern accent. So, I put that into the character!

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Life After Beth is playing in select cities now. For more information about the film, check out its website. To read our review, click here. Check out our interview with director Jeff Baena here.