Saturday Night Live’s influence on Kate McKinnon has extended past comedy, into the literary world.
While visiting Late Night with Seth Meyers on Tuesday night, the former SNL star revealed the origins of her debut novel, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science.
The middle-grade mystery—a creature-filled story about three young sisters who attend a school for mad scientists—was a longtime passion project of McKinnon’s. She told Meyers she started the book in her mid-20s, before she was even cast on SNL.
However, if it weren’t for her decade on the show, the book could have remained unfinished.
“I wrote the first chapter so many times,” McKinnon said. “I could not make it to that second chapter.” While she had a story in mind, putting it to paper proved to be an intimidating task.
“Honestly, working at SNL all those years, sitting in a room while the funniest, smartest people are writing, and just watching,” she explained to Meyers. “It taught me basically how to think and write. So shout-out to all my colleagues at SNL.”
The book, which was released on Tuesday, is the culmination of years of work. “I couldn’t let it go,” McKinnon recounted. “Every week off I had, I would work on it. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
As Meyers pointed out, McKinnon may also have been influenced by the show when naming the characters in her book, which include such eccentric monikers as G. Edwina Candlestank, Talon Sharktūth, and the titular Millicent Quibb. SNL has a long history of fitting absurd names into its sketches—and the two alums agreed that one writer was particularly adept at it.
James Anderson is the reigning “name king” at the show, McKinnon revealed. His contributions include classics like Reese De’What and Myron Beliefs. (While the latter doesn’t seem to have made it onto the show, McKinnon called it her “favorite name of all time.”)
McKinnon was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2012 through 2022, a run that was recently immortalized with her own Funko Pop! figure.
