In praise of Kate McKinnon – your new favourite… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

In praise of Kate McK­in­non – your new favourite actor

12 Jul 2016

Blonde woman wearing round sunglasses, green jacket, and patterned scarf, standing outdoors against a green wall.
Blonde woman wearing round sunglasses, green jacket, and patterned scarf, standing outdoors against a green wall.
A film-steal­ing turn as Jil­lian Holtz­man in the new Ghost­busters leads us to ask: who is this fab­u­lous­ly fun­ny star?

Now that the new Ghost­busters film is out of the bag, the most suc­cess­ful ele­ment appears to be the one that ini­tial­ly met with the most force­ful back­lash: the recast­ing of the orig­i­nal team as women, with com­e­dy giants Kris­ten Wiig and Melis­sa McCarthy at the fore­front. The bot­tom line is, it works. The chem­istry between the four leads is one of the film’s key strengths.

But if there’s one thing crit­ics large­ly seem to agree on (despite a few lone, crazed hold­outs), it’s that idio­syn­crat­ic muni­tions expert Jil­lian Holtz­man, as played by Kate McK­in­non, steals the show. Whether the group are fight­ing malev­o­lent para­nor­mal forces or cruis­ing around in a decked-out hearse, it’s McK­in­non who stands out (the group’s first encounter with a ghost finds McK­in­non casu­al­ly suc­cumb­ing to the salty ecsta­sy of Pringles). As a rel­a­tive unknown in com­par­i­son to her estab­lished co-stars, her cast­ing may have been some­thing of a gam­ble. But direc­tor Paul Feig has made a habit of cast­ing strong female leads, and in this case, it paid off big time. The ques­tion remains: who is she?

Best known for her sketch com­e­dy work, McK­in­non is by no means a new­com­er to the screen. In fact, for IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, her Ghost­busters per­for­mance was, anoth­er reminder that she’s one of the fun­ni­est peo­ple in Amer­i­ca.” McK­in­non made her TV debut on Sat­ur­day Night Live in 2012 and was pro­mot­ed to series reg­u­lar a year lat­er. Also of note is that she’s the show’s first open­ly gay female cast mem­ber. Since then, she’s been nom­i­nat­ed for two Prime­time Emmys for Out­stand­ing Sup­port­ing Actress in a Com­e­dy Series for her stel­lar work on SNL. Alas, she lost to Alli­son Jan­ney both times. Her array of orig­i­nal roles demon­strate her ver­sa­til­i­ty, rang­ing from a Russ­ian vil­lager to a neigh­bour with a ten­den­cy for leav­ing pas­sive aggres­sive notes. It’s worth watch­ing the sketch where McK­in­non por­trays a woman who has an under­whelm­ing run-in with alien abduc­tors. Plus, she’s the only one who man­ages to keep a straight face throughout.

As well as this, she’s also firm­ly estab­lished her niche as one of SNL’s stand­out impres­sion­ists. Her skill is being able to imbue all of her imper­son­ations with an almost child­like inno­cence – not in a way that den­i­grates and infan­tilis­es their real-life coun­ter­parts, but in a way that human­is­es them too. McKinnon’s con­stant­ly befud­dled Angela Merkel is always just try­ing to do her job. Her Ruth Bad­er Gins­berg fol­lows up every sar­don­ic put-down with a tri­umphant vic­to­ry dance.

It’s impos­si­ble to talk about McKinnon’s impres­sions with­out acknowl­edg­ing the role that has become her trade­mark: Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton. It’s been met with wide­spread acclaim, not only from audi­ences, but from the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date her­self. In fact, McKinnon’s Clin­ton has gained such noto­ri­ety that Clin­ton her­self made a sur­prise appear­ance on the show oppo­site the actor, play­ing a bar­tender named Val. From Clinton’s exten­sive attempts to ingra­ti­ate her­self amongst bray­ing mil­len­ni­als (in one sketch, McKinnon’s Clin­ton tries and fails to film a cam­paign video on a smart­phone) to a cam­paign ad where she slow­ly morphs into rival Bernie Sanders, McKinnon’s Clin­ton is deter­mined to let noth­ing stand in the way of her ascent to the pres­i­den­cy. Despite the stan­dard set by long-time SNL Clin­ton imper­son­ator Amy Poehler, McK­in­non goes above and beyond. She makes the role her own.

But McK­in­non doesn’t only exist in the SNL bub­ble. She’s also an accom­plished voiceover artist. Aside from a reg­u­lar stint on the children’s show Nature Cat (chron­i­cling the adven­tures of a quirky feline), she’s also lent her vocal tal­ents to The Simp­sons and Fam­i­ly Guy, as well as fea­ture films like Ted 2 and Find­ing Dory. And accord­ing to her alum­ni web­site, she can play the gui­tar, the piano and the cel­lo. Before her career kicked off, she worked as a tele­mar­keter for an SAT-prep com­pa­ny. In her own words: 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.”

If you’ve seen McK­in­non effort­less­ly switch back and forth between her imper­son­ations of Clin­ton and Ellen Degeneres, her stand­out turn in Ghost­busters won’t come as much of a sur­prise. For many mid­dle-aged fan­boys resid­ing some­where in a base­ment near you, reboot­ing a beloved clas­sic with an all-female cast was a sign of the impend­ing apoc­a­lypse. They even went so far as to launch a suc­cess­ful cam­paign to make the Ghost­busters trail­er the most dis­liked video on YouTube. In the wake of the film, how­ev­er, if there’s one thing that’s abun­dant­ly clear, it’s that McK­in­non and the rest of the cast get the last laugh.

Read our review of Ghost­busters here

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