The joke's on you

Hollywood diaries

Since its release, Ghostbusters, the reboot of the 1984 action comedy updated with a cast of female leads, has conjured up a series of heated debates about how women are depicted in movies and how they are treated online and in social media.

The film has also shined a spotlight on Kate McKinnon, the comic actress who plays the Ghostbusters team member Dr Jillian Holtzmann, a wild-haired scientist and technology whiz who hides a mischievous sense of humour behind a pair of goggle glasses, a trench coat and a deadpan delivery. Playing off celebrated co-stars like Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, she is able to steal even the scenes in which she has no dialogue with just a gaudy grimace or a roll of her eyes.

As Manohla Dargis wrote in her review of Ghostbusters for The New York Times, McKinnon “makes for a sublime nerd goddess,” bringing “a dash of the young Jerry Lewis to the role with a glint of Amy Poehler.” Like her cinematic counterpart, McKinnon, 32, seems to have been hiding in plain sight. A Long Island, New York, native and Columbia University graduate, she has become an integral cast member at Saturday Night Live, where, over five seasons, she has delivered reliably eccentric impersonations of Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Angela Merkel, as well as a roster of oddball celebrities, foreigners and barflies. She received her fourth Emmy nomination in July, and is poised for the kind of career breakout enjoyed by her SNL predecessors and personal heroes like Tina Fey, Poehler and Wiig.

Not that McKinnon thinks of herself this way. “I pride myself on being tragically uncool,” she explained. “I’m wearing cat socks right now,” she said in her dry, Hepburn-esque drawl. “But I’m wearing them just for the utilitarian purpose of wearing socks.”
McKinnon spoke about her Ghostbusters experience and the distinctions she draws between her characters and herself. Here are excerpts from the conversation:

Who devised her wardrobe and hairstyle?
The costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland, had gotten all these wacky things, and when I saw them initially, I thought, this is way too cool. I wanted to be the plainest of the plain. But then I rationalised it by saying that, to her, it’s not even cool. She just has these objects and throws them on. The hair was a collaboration between me and Brenda McNally, my hairstylist. I was like, what hair would a person who doesn’t care about an exploding nuclear reactor have? Probably Tilda Swinton’s hair.

Do you think it’s significant that moviegoers who don’t see themselves represented onscreen are identifying with her?
I wanted Holtzmann to be a general champion for the disenfranchised and the other. And I hope that she appeals to anyone who feels like that.

You’re modest in person, yet you play many over-the-top characters. Where do they come from, I wonder?
You and my therapist. There must be some exhibitionist tendency that I funnel into these other people. I think it comes from wanting to share and to connect, to offer up for display something that I find delightful and fascinating. I hope that if other people feel the same way, then we’ve made a connection. That’s the way I feel most comfortable connecting.

Are you paying close attention to the presidential election to gather more material on Hillary Clinton?
I’m following it because we’re at a real moment right now. But also because I feel connected to her, in a strange way. I spend so many hours studying her and imagining her inner life that I feel like we’re close. Even though I don’t have her phone number.

Did you feel that when you appeared in an SNL sketch with her last season?
She was warm, charming and sincere. And I liked being around her, and I felt a similarity to her, in that I am an accomplished legal scholar and have spent my life crusading for the middle class.

Are you already thinking about SNL starting up in the fall?
Yes, I think it’s a good time to be a comedian. Some people look at movies and think, oh my gosh, that’s so amazing. But to me, I look at a politician or a scientist and think, they’re creating the content of humanity. Comedy has become, I think, an important branch of public intellectualism. But it still ain’t Washington.