Kate McKinnon

In the very first episode of Happy Hour with Ina Garten, Ina welcomes Emmy-winning comedian and actor Kate McKinnon to her kitchen table in New York City for a drink and a chat. Kate talks about moving to the woods, gardening, the fine art of pickling, and the time she almost gave up on her SNL audition. Kate has a new book called "The Jungle of Carabanana." Beloved hostess Ina Garten welcomes listeners into her New York City apartment for Happy Hour with Ina Garten. Every Wednesday, she sits down with people she’d like to meet from the worlds of culture, food, art, sports, and entertainment for the kinds of conversations you would love to overhear at a great dinner party. Warm, funny, personal, and often unexpected, Happy Hour mixes in-depth conversation with stories, recipes, and, of course, cocktails. Pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and join the conversation. SUBSCRIBE ► Subscribe to Happy Hour with Ina Garten for new episodes every Wednesday: https://www.youtube.com/@HappyHourwithIna?sub_confirmation=1 FOLLOW THE SHOW ► Happy Hour on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HappyHourwithIna?sub_confirmation=1 ► Happy Hour on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happyhourwithina ► Happy Hour on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@happyhourwithina ► Happy Hour on Substack: https://happyhourwithinagarten.substack.com/welcome ► Happy Hour on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61589319634655 Host: Ina Garten Executive Producers: Jenna Weiss-Berman, Suzie Lechtenberg, Ali Jaffe Ramis, and Deborah Davis Contributing Producer: Kate Tyler Senior Producer: Justine Daum Video Editor: Tim Fernandez Associate Producer: Mica Pollan Bahn Sound Recording: Joe Plourde Camera Operators: Joe Valenzuela and Zoe Gregoric Music by Pink Martini Special Thanks to Cinematographer Dion Beebe Happy Hour with Ina is made by Good Wait Productions. This is a Vox Media podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ina Garten?

  I'm Ina Garten and this is Happy Hour. In each episode, I invite someone really interesting for cocktails and a great conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. Today, I'm joined by Emmy award-winning actor and comedian Kate McKinnon. You know her from SNL and the Barbie film.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Obviously, I have a taste for the strange.

• 0:24Ina Garten?

  Kate also has an upcoming children's book called The Mills and Quib Series. Honey, no! We talk about everything from creating characters to gardening, to pickling, alien abductions, and so much more.

• 1:14Ina Garten?

  Kate McKinnon? Welcome to Happy Hour.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:18Ina Garten?

  I am so happy to have you here.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I'm so happy to be here.

• 1:21Ina Garten?

  So I make caipirascas. How's that for an unusual name for a drink?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Tell me more.

• 1:27Ina Garten?

  It's basically limeade with vodka. And it's like the national drink of like... Exactly. Drink up.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Delish.

• 1:36Ina Garten?

  It's gonna be a rocky ride.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Good. It is because I'm the biggest lightweight I've ever met.

• 1:42Ina Garten?

  I have one sip and I can feel it.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I can too.

• 1:45Ina Garten?

  And I've already felt it. What I say is I spend much more time talking about cocktails than I do actually drinking cocktails. Are you the same way?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, I barely drink. I have a drink maybe once a month. And then when I do...

• 1:58Ina Garten?

  And so this is it?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, this is it. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna be toasted.

• 2:02Ina Garten?

  We met a couple of years ago at The Bourne.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yes. It was my very best friend Alex Carillo Vicino's bachelorette party.

• 2:10Ina Garten?

  That's, that's...

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Super int.

• 2:11Ina Garten?

  I remember you. I couldn't remember who you came with.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  My best friend Alex Carillo Vicino and her sister Francesca. Anyway, we were there for her bachelorette. The three of us have always been obsessive fans of yours. Hello.

• 2:25Ina Garten?

  As I am for you.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Oh, please, stop. Wrong. Anyway, I said to myself, you know what would be the best bachelorette surprise for my best friend Alex Carillo Vicino? If I just did something crazy and saw, saw if Ina was around. And I, I sent an email and there you were. And then you welcomed us and it was magical.

• 2:47Ina Garten?

  It was great. It was so much fun.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  And we still talk about it, me and Alex Carillo Vicino and her sister Francesca.

• 2:52Ina Garten?

  Tina Fey used to tell her producer, every time she said, "What would you like for your birthday?" And she would say, "I wanna, I wanna meet Ina Garten." And I'm not the sweetest. This went on for years. And we tried to make a date. We tried to make a date. And it never happened. And finally, she said, "I wanna meet her." And of course, you can't meet Tina and not have a great time, right?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Of course. I think that's probably a lot of people's birthday wish.

• 3:15Ina Garten?

  Of course. What are you doing? What did you bring?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  I brought you stuff in these compostable plastic bags.

• 3:23Ina Garten?

  They're so elegant.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  I brought just some, some herbs for you.

• 3:27Ina Garten?

  Is this from your garden?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Well, yes, because we've got some thyme and some basil. And you requested mint for the caipirascas.

• 3:36Ina Garten?

  Oh, how fat...

• 3:36Speaker 01

  And there's that.

• 3:37Ina Garten?

  Don't, don't we need mint in our drinks?

• 3:39Speaker 01

  We do.

• 3:40Ina Garten?

  I think we do.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  And I've got some sage and lavender here. And then I, and I brought you as a, as a present, very expensive, some Borlotti beans that I grew.

• 3:51Ina Garten?

  You're a serious gardener.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Well, I've become, it's become my whole personality, which is good because I didn't have one to begin with. So this provides something. But aren't they just...

• 4:02Ina Garten?

  They're just gorgeous.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Gorgeous.

• 4:04Ina Garten?

  Absolutely gorgeous.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  See? Anyway.

• 4:07Ina Garten?

  They're Borlotti beans?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:09Ina Garten?

  Thank you.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  They're Borlotti beans. And you can shuck these later.

• 4:12Ina Garten?

  Aw, shucks.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  By your lonesome. Yes. Okay.

• 4:15Ina Garten?

  There we go. This is just like a bounty. I love it. Absolutely love. So a friend of mine described you as like Russian nesting dolls. You open one doll and there's another personality inside that has a completely different talent. I mean, it's, it's amazing. You're a comedian, obviously. You're an actor. You're a writer. You've written incredible books, which are gonna talk, we're gonna talk about. You're a singer. You play the piano. And now you've moved to the country and you do carpentry? Do you do plumbing as well?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I've just begun.

• 4:47Ina Garten?

  Have you really?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I have just begun.

• 4:48Ina Garten?

  How do you learn plumbing?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Um, men.

• 4:52Ina Garten?

  Men? Oh, men love to teach women things, right?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Well, they, they have the skills.

• 4:56Ina Garten?

  To men, to men who like to teach women.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  I love men. No, I look at men on YouTube. I love to look at men on YouTube. And, and then sometimes I will meet a man in the trade who I just have a loving connection with. And I say, "Hey, show me." And he shows me.

• 5:19Ina Garten?

  He'll show you anything, right?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And I watch that man. And I learn from that man.

• 5:24Ina Garten?

  So what was the first time you did an impersonation of somebody on stage?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I developed an impression of my art history teacher in high school, who is the most fabulous person that ever lived. And I developed this impression and I did it over the loudspeaker. I did the morning announcements as her in high school. And she was very gracious about it.

• 5:48Ina Garten?

  What was the name? Do you remember what it was?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Well, she happens to talk like this. And she's, she's a brilliant woman with, who is a brilliant educator and art historian. She happened also to talk like this. And I... Hi, Ms. Ravenhoff.

• 6:03Ina Garten?

  So you gave her the morning announcement?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I did. I did. So I did. And, you know, I have to say, it was a pretty good impression.

• 6:11Ina Garten?

  And I'm sure it was a good impression.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  And, and she was such a good sport about it. And it became sort of a thing. And I, but I always love to do accents and voices. And I just think that there, whenever I, I see an opportunity to play a role, the, my first and basically only question is, "What's the voice? What do they sound like?" And then, of course, "What's the hair?" Those are the only two things that matter.

• 6:40Ina Garten?

  The hair is really critical, isn't it?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:41Ina Garten?

  Yes. It's so interesting.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  It is such a big part of the storytelling. I've never been like the greatest technical impressionist. It's more for me, I, I imagine the inner life of that person and I, I have, to me, the, the impression has to contain a thesis about who they are, what they mean to the culture. And it has to say something in addition to just sounding like them. And so often I have veered, tried more to say something than to sound exactly like. Because I just, there are, there are people who do that so much better than I.

• 7:22Ina Garten?

  And so, and you, somebody told me that you have two words for each person that are opposing. Is that right?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:30Ina Garten?

  So how did you come up with that idea that they're opposing words? They're one thing, but there's something totally different. And do you think they live in all of us? That we all have kind of opposing things? What are yours?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Oh, Christ. Oh, God. I don't even know. My God, that would be, that would be frightening to know what you are.

• 7:52Ina Garten?

  It's funny because I think mine are kind of warm or loving or something like that and really tough. Those are the opposing things to me. And I can imagine they would be similar for you.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I haven't, you know, you come off as, as very warm, mostly warm. I'm curious. I'd love to see the tough.

• 8:09Ina Garten?

  No, just tough in business. I'm very clear about like what I wanna do.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  That's hot. I like that.

• 8:15Ina Garten?

  Uh-oh.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  It's working. It's working.

• 8:20Ina Garten?

  Drink up.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Don't worry, I will. Anyway, but yes, I think the essence of any comedic character is two juxtap, diametrically opposed elements.

• 8:33Ina Garten?

  That's so interesting.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  And that that is what makes human beings interesting and funny and capable of being humiliated in a way that makes them endearing and relatable to them.

• 8:48Ina Garten?

  But you have enormous empathy for the people that you do impressions of. And I, I think that they don't, they don't, they find them funny because they see themselves in it. Am I right? Have you offended anybody?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  I have, I'm sure I have. I haven't heard directly from them, but I, I'm sure I have. Which, which upsets me because I do, I have, in order to do anybody, I have found something to love about them, even if I profoundly disagree with them.

• 9:14Ina Garten?

  You know, I had one moment where I was being interviewed on stage at the 92nd Street Y. And I said something that was really funny. And people just exploded in the audience. And they were like stomping their feet on the floor. And I, in that moment, I remember sitting up there thinking, "Oh, my God. This is what a comedian feels like." I could, I felt like I'd levitated. It was like I could, I was so high, I could like float away. Is that the way you feel when you're on stage and you're, you're entertaining people?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, because to me, laughter, when some, when you say something and someone else laughs, that laugh is as if to say, "I see you. I agree. I see that too. We're here together on the planet and we're having a connection." And that is like, and when you can have a connection with 500 people at once and you see that they see you and you're, you have something in common, that is like...

• 10:11Ina Garten?

  And I feel the same way you do.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 10:13Ina Garten?

  I didn't understand what it was. That's exactly what it was.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  It is, it is floating. It is...

• 10:19Ina Garten?

  Do you feel that way too? I felt like I was just gonna float away.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 10:23Ina Garten?

  I couldn't believe it. And it was happening in the, in real time. But one of the things that happened too is the thing I said had been said by a friend of mine backstage. And I kind of borrowed her. And I went backstage afterwards and I said, "I'm so sorry. I got total credit for your humor." And she said to me, "Everybody needs a writer." Just totally let me off the hook. But it's just interesting, the relationship between the performer and the writer. Because you can use, do you have like notebooks filled with good ideas?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  I used to.

• 10:52Ina Garten?

  You used to? What happened?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I started gardening. And then, and Ina...

• 10:58Ina Garten?

  We have to talk about gardening because that's an obsession.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  This, this shit and I have to, am I allowed to curse? This is, it's a full-time job.

• 11:08Ina Garten?

  Gardening.

• 11:10Ina Garten?

  No, it's years of a full-time job.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  It's years of a full-time job that I love. But like, I made, I had to make a vat of sauce this morning because the tomatoes were about to turn and I had to. So I, you know, I canned seven jars this morning.

• 11:24Ina Garten?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  And I canned seven jars the day before. I'm canning and canning.

• 11:27Ina Garten?

  And you picked beans.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  I picked you some beans, but that was, that was, that was easy compared to the canning. My God, I'm canning. The pickling, the pickling alone.

• 11:37Ina Garten?

  And this is one of your great talents, pickling. And you need to give me your pickling recipe.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  I've arrived at a brine that I like.

• 11:47Ina Garten?

  What do you pickle?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  I pickle.

• 11:50Ina Garten?

  Beside, beside ourselves.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. True. I, the cucumber beetles ate my cucumbers this year. They died. So I have pickled a lot of fennel and radishes and beets and stuff like that.

• 12:07Ina Garten?

  Pickled fennel sounds good. That sounds great.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I should have brought you that.

• 12:10Ina Garten?

  I love fennel.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  One day.

• 12:12Ina Garten?

  I'll be, I'll come back. Snooping around your garden. If there's somebody snooping around the garden with the deer and the rabbits, it'll be me. So you've created some of the most iconic characters ever. Some, some of them are voiceovers, some of them are real. But I, like Miss Frizzle and Weird Barbie. Oh, my God, how do you even start with those?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Well, though, like, it's, I'm, I'm, I, I, I think I'm kind of niche. I know that. I can, I can say that about myself. And I feel that I'm a little niche. And so when a character comes along that is larger than life, a Miss Frizzle, a Weird Barbie, I say, okay, thank God. This I can do in my sleep. The other thing, if I try to act normal, that doesn't work so well. But so when, so when an opportunity comes along to play, you know, the equivalent of Pippi Longstock and grown up, someone who's just outrageous, not of this world, over the top,

• 13:15Speaker 01

  that I feel is like easy peasy.

• 13:18Ina Garten?

  I can do this in my sleep, right? Why do I feel like you were just doing it, Kay McKinnon?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  It's me.

• 13:27Ina Garten?

  Look, one thing I have to say is comedy, I think, is the hardest form of entertainment. I mean, Jeffrey and I were asked to give a talk at somebody's retirement party in Paris. And the two of us made the disastrous mistake to decide to roast our friend. We thought it was hilarious, but oh, my God, not, not, nobody laughed. Nobody said a word. And you're in, in the middle of it halfway through and we're looking at each other going, do we just split? Or do we keep going? What do you do? Have you ever bombed?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I've bombed.

• 14:01Ina Garten?

  And what do you do about it?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  I've bombed in France.

• 14:03Ina Garten?

  You bombed in France? So we've bombed in the same place?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:07Ina Garten?

  We had so much in common.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I was at a, I was watching a soccer match.

• 14:11Ina Garten?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Sorry, football, sorry. Football.

• 14:15Ina Garten?

  Whatever they call it.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  At a restaurant in Paris and the Swiss team hadn't scored anything. And the, the server came over and was talking and I said, I made a joke that didn't even make sense in English. The joke in English was, the Swiss really are neutral, aren't they? Which is a stretch in English. But I said, Les Suisses sont vraiment neutres.

• 14:44Ina Garten?

  Oh, you said it in French?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yes, but neutres.

• 14:47Ina Garten?

  That's not the word for neutral.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I don't know what it means, but it, it didn't land. It landed very wrong. And I could tell from his face and he was like, quoi, quoi? And I was like, les Suisses sont vraiment neutres, oui? Oui? Parce que le, le football.

• 15:07Ina Garten?

  I love your French name, you're a French person.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I just, I had to say, never mind, eventually. In English with my tail between my legs, yeah.

• 15:17Ina Garten?

  I went to a hairdresser once in France and he said, would you, in French, he said, would you like your hair straight or curly? I thought, oh, what the hell? It's New Year's Eve, how about curly? So he did my hair curly and I wanted to say to him, and I did it in French, I wanted to say, my, when my husband sees me, he's going to say, kiss me quick before my wife gets here. So I just, I said what I thought. I said, baissez-moi vite en avance quand ma femme arrive. And the hairdresser was just horrified. And that night I went, I was like, I said something wrong, but I have no idea what. That night I went out with friends and asked, what did I say? And they said, he said, fuck me quick before my wife gets here.

• 15:59Ina Garten?

  So you get it a little wrong and it's just totally wrong. Oh, my God.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Well, I'm laughing.

• 16:08Ina Garten?

  The things we do, the things we do in foreign languages.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  That's funny.

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• 16:37Speaker 03

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• 16:51Speaker 03

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• 16:57Ina Garten?

  When you were in school, I think you were like me, you were a science nerd. I was a science nerd too.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 17:01Ina Garten?

  You were? I was such a science nerd. I just, I would, I would, I would do projects for like, science projects. And the boys in my class would go to the library for a year and study like cancer. And I hated going to the library. So I would stay home and I'd go, okay, I'm going to do a science experiment with 12 mice. And I got 12 mice. And I, I had them compete against each other, but you had, they had two teams. So you had to, had to differentiate them because they run together. So one of them, I dyed purple. I would pick them up by their tails and dip them in, in purple dye and they'd come up like this. And so I had two teams, the white team and the purple team. And I would compete them against each other.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  In what way?

• 17:46Ina Garten?

  It was a science experiment to see how quickly they would learn something. It was, it was crazy. But I would win all the science projects and the boys would hate me because they'd worked so hard on them. Year after year, I'd win the science project. But I always thought science was fun. And I, obviously you did too.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Wow, you pitted mice against one another in a battle to the death. I did a similar, I too did an experiment with vermin.

• 18:17Ina Garten?

  With vermin?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  I had to do.

• 18:18Ina Garten?

  Are you calling my mice vermin?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Well, no, but in some circles, you know, they're not, you know, the hero of the tale. Anyway, I.

• 18:27Ina Garten?

  I have to say, they made a jail break once and my mother, they were running all over the house. My mother wasn't that happy about it. So what kind of vermin did you have?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Cockroaches.

• 18:36Ina Garten?

  You had cockroaches?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I did an experiment with Madagascar hissing cockroaches. And.

• 18:43Ina Garten?

  What's a hissing cockroach?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  And obviously hisses. You love them. They're, they're three inches long.

• 18:48Ina Garten?

  Yeah.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And they're wingless, thank God. And when you touch them, they blow air out of little holes in their side and they make a hissing sound. So my experiment was to see if they would respond with a hiss to anything other than a tactile stimulus. And it was a bit of a bullshit experiment, but, you know, I played a vacuum cleaner for them to see if that would make them hiss. And I sort of turned the lights on and off. Turns out that didn't, it's just when you touch them. Anyway, I then.

• 19:19Ina Garten?

  But it was an important experiment because you need to know.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Well, it was groundbreaking research, obviously.

• 19:23Ina Garten?

  You just never know, you could have discovered something about hissing cockroaches.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Well, for cancer, it was for cancer. Anyway, no, no, I, no.

• 19:31Ina Garten?

  What happened to the cockroaches?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Well, after the experiment was done, I went to my beloved mother and I said, Mom, can I keep these cockroaches in my suburban bedroom? And she said,

• 19:44Ina Garten?

  Oh, God.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yes, because I already had an iguana. So I was halfway to jungle status. And so the cockroaches came in. So at one point I had hamsters, a salamander, cockroaches and an iguana and a cat.

• 19:58Ina Garten?

  In the same room?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  In a room. And that was chaos. And, you know.

• 20:04Ina Garten?

  Was the rule that they could stay in the room as long as they never left the room?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:08Ina Garten?

  So that was their whole world?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yes, but I did, I, they were in a tank, but I would take them out and sort of play with them like Barbies.

• 20:17Ina Garten?

  We, we, we had to be the weirdest kids around. I kind of know anybody else who had.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  You had your purple mice.

• 20:24Ina Garten?

  Purple mice and hissing cockroaches.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Oh, Sharon, it's you. Sharon, you're pregnant.

• 20:32Ina Garten?

  And you had an iguana?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 20:34Ina Garten?

  Did I catch that?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 20:35Ina Garten?

  And did the iguana have a name?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Willie.

• 20:38Ina Garten?

  Willie the Iguana, of course, everybody would name their iguana Willie. And they didn't eat each other?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  They didn't, they didn't meet, but they must have been chatting about me while I was at school. This bitch.

• 20:50Ina Garten?

  What would they say?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Can you believe she's trapping us in this suburban bedroom? We're jungle animals, for Christ's sake. Let us out, I hate this girl.

• 21:01Ina Garten?

  They didn't even know there was a wider world out there?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 21:04Ina Garten?

  You know, I have, I have, my whole garden is all fenced in and there are rabbits in there. And the other day I was thinking, I feel so badly for the rabbits. All they know is my garden. They're born in there, they die in the, for like years. That's all they know. And somebody said, it's actually not so bad because the foxes can't get in and eat them. So at least they're safe. So they were safe in your room?

• 21:27Speaker 01

  They're lucky.

• 21:28Ina Garten?

  Right?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  They're lucky to be in Ina Garten's garden, my God.

• 21:32Ina Garten?

  I'm not sure they get the same thing.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Other rabbits wish they were in Ina Garten's garden.

• 21:39Ina Garten?

  So you and I have a secret crush. And it's the same one. Mel Brooks. Didn't you used to watch Mel Brooks? Have you ever met him?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  I've never met Mel Brooks.

• 21:54Ina Garten?

  He is hilarious. He is absolutely so funny. When he was doing The Producers, and my friend Susan Strowman was the director. He lived in Watermelon. He'd just lost his wife, Anne, who used to cook for him. And so he would come for dinner. And it was just so wonderful to spend an evening with him. I can't even tell you. And on the way out, he would go look through my cookbook. And he'd go, "This chicken with forty cloves of garlic looks really good." And I'm like, "If you come next Saturday, I'll make it for you." I don't think it was my company he was coming back for. I think it was the chicken with forty cloves of garlic. It was just, the two of you would get along like a house on fire.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I just, we watched The Producers in my house, the film, once a week.

• 22:41Ina Garten?

  Once a week?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  For my whole childhood.

• 22:44Ina Garten?

  How fabulous.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And I have memorized every line of that film.

• 22:48Ina Garten?

  He's just, and he just turned a hundred. And he's gonna outlive both of us, I'm sure about that.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 22:55Ina Garten?

  So after ten years at SNL, you decide you're gonna move to the country? Is that what happened?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:02Ina Garten?

  So is it cozy and warm with a big fire? Or is it like The Shining? Or is it like Aliens in the Woods?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  It's cozy and warm with a little fire and a big garden. And there is a town nearby that is known for its alien abductions, but not the one that I live in, per se.

• 23:23Ina Garten?

  Oh, my God. I think the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life is you and Meryl Streep, for the 50th anniversary of SNL, being mother and daughter, having been abducted by aliens. Can I toast that? That will live on forever with The Producers. Was that fun?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  That was so interesting, because they were like, "Who do you think you would like to ask to be in the sketch with you for this 50th anniversary show?" And I was like, "I don't know, Meryl Streep."

• 23:59Ina Garten?

  It's everybody's first answer.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  And then they said, "Meryl will do it." And I was like, "Oh, I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready." And then they said, "Call Meryl and just tell her a little bit about the sketch." And I said, "Okay."

• 24:20Ina Garten?

  She said yes without even knowing what it was about?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  She knew roughly what it was about. They wanted me to discuss the particulars with her. And I said, "Okay, I'll call Meryl Streep, fine."

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Hello? And of course, we talked about gardening, because that's the magic of SNL. You get to...

• 24:41Ina Garten?

  Yeah. Work with the best.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Do the silliest things with the greatest living actress. And it's just, that's funny. Now, that's a juxtaposition that's funny.

• 24:53Ina Garten?

  Exactly. But also, she has an incredible sense of humor.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  An incredible sense of humor, yes.

• 24:57Ina Garten?

  She can be serious, she can be funny, she can be anything. I mean, she can create any character, ever.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  She turned to me and she was like, "Are my pants hiked up enough? Can you see enough of what's going on?" And I said, "Give him one more yank. Let's really get up there and there."

• 25:20Ina Garten?

  It was just great. It was just, to watch the other actors while you're doing it is just unbelievable. So fabulous. Okay, so tell me about your garden.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Okay, it's my fourth season. It's expanded. I've dug up more and more of my lawn every year.

• 25:39Ina Garten?

  That's what you do. That's what gardeners do. You plant it over the winter, and then you dig up more. And then, at the end of the summer, you go, "Why did I do that?" So what is your garden?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  I have big plans for next year.

• 25:50Ina Garten?

  What's it like?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  There's not gonna be one fucking patch of grass left. I've got Ray's Bents, I've got Rose, I've got a terraced section with Rose. And I just, I learn so much every year. And I've been doing a lot of preserving, as I said, because if you grow that many tomatoes, you can't let them just fall.

• 26:16Ina Garten?

  So you make sauce? Or do you do other things with them?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm on my 20th jar of sauce I canned this morning. Can I even eat all that sauce? Yes, I can.

• 26:27Ina Garten?

  You can give it away.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I can eat that in a week, come on.

• 26:31Ina Garten?

  I actually found I only grow cherry tomatoes, because the big tomatoes, when you go out there, every single one has one bite out of it. Like a raccoon or... I don't know. Maybe it's Jeffrey, I haven't seen him.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I bet it is.

• 26:48Ina Garten?

  But one bite. Can't you just eat the entire tomato and leave the rest? One bite. And I can't eat a tomato that has a bite out of it, I just can't.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Right. Whose mouth was on that? Did they brush their teeth? I don't think so.

• 27:01Ina Garten?

  So you have a new book. It's called The Jungle of, let me see if I can say this, Cara Banana.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I wanted to write something that celebrated the bizarre creatures that we see all around us. Obviously, I have a taste for the strange. My cockroaches, my iguana, et cetera. I've always been obsessed with how nature is so bizarre that you really don't have to write about magic. You can just write about...

• 27:39Ina Garten?

  What exists.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Science, and that's weird enough. And so I, just over a period of 12 or so years, was thinking about this story about three sort of lost children who become and mentored, is that a word? It's not a word. Who are meant, become the mentees of a mad scientist. And they fight the bad guys. And I just, I love thinking about the world of the 1890s. The world of Alexander von Humboldt, the naturalist who's like, got 2,000 species named after him or something. He was this explorer.

• 28:23Ina Garten?

  Seriously?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. I love thinking about a time when not everything had been cataloged, photographed, and put into AI already. When there was still magic and wonder in the real world. And discovery, exactly.

• 28:40Ina Garten?

  If you were gonna have something named after you, what would it be?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Some bug, some weird bug.

• 28:45Ina Garten?

  A bug, I love that. A hissing cockroach, say.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  My goodness.

• 28:52Ina Garten?

  Where do you even get a hissing cockroach?

• 28:54Speaker 01

  You know, the school obtained them for me, and I don't wanna know.

• 28:57Ina Garten?

  And will the iguana, where did he come from?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Pet land.

• 29:01Ina Garten?

  Pet land.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Pet land. And then he went to Boca.

• 29:05Ina Garten?

  He went to Boca? He retired?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  He retired to Boca, yes.

• 29:08Ina Garten?

  Very nice.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:09Ina Garten?

  Because Jeffrey, actually, when we were dating, he lived in Florida. And he sent me an alligator in a box.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Come again?

• 29:18Ina Garten?

  Jeffrey sent me an alligator. No, he didn't send me flowers and chocolates. He sent me an alligator.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  And what were you supposed to do with that?

• 29:25Ina Garten?

  I have no idea. But I put it in my mother's wash, you know, like her laundry sink. You arrive in the morning, and it was like, just like this. I was like, "Oh, my God, the alligator's dead." And then the next afternoon, he was just like swimming around. We had to feed him raw meat. Oh, it was just, and then one day, he just disappeared. I have no idea what happened to the alligator. And I always suspected, but I never said it out loud, that my mother had something to do with a crime. Maybe she wanted to do the laundry.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 29:57Ina Garten?

  And there was an alligator in there.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And this is the relationship that we'll look up to as an example of what true...

• 30:03Ina Garten?

  It got better after that.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  True decades of true love looks like.

• 30:08Ina Garten?

  So everybody has a sliding doors moment. Like the moment in your life where, with serendipity, everything changed. What was that moment for you?

• 30:22Speaker 01

  I was so afraid to audition for Saturday Night Live because it was everything that I ever wanted. It was the only thing that mattered to me. It was everything that I'd been working for since my childhood. And I was so afraid that if I really did it and it didn't happen, then where would I go from there? So I thought that I would throw the audition.

• 30:55Ina Garten?

  You were afraid you would throw it?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  No, I decided that I would throw the audition.

• 31:00Ina Garten?

  So what did you do?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I said to myself, "I'm going to throw the audition."

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Because I was so afraid of what it would mean if I got the job, of what it would mean if I didn't get the job. Both things seemed so crazy to me. And so I thought best to just, "I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready to be done with this. I'm not ready to have this happen." I just, "Ah!"

• 31:33Ina Garten?

  How old were you?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Twenty-eight.

• 31:35Ina Garten?

  So, yeah, so this is get-serious time.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yes. And then I was speaking to a friend over the phone, and she said, "I think you might want to not throw the audition because haven't you been working for this since your childhood? And don't you want to see what would happen if you really tried your best?" And I said, "Oh, damn, fuck you!" But of course, she was right. And I...

• 32:02Ina Garten?

  Well, it's funny because your instinct was to not want it too much and to throw it so you didn't have to deal with the success of doing it or the pressure of doing it.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Or the failure of doing it.

• 32:11Ina Garten?

  Or the failure of doing it.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Or the failure of not being able to do it.

• 32:13Ina Garten?

  So you were keeping the decision yours by throwing it rather than giving them the choice, the power to choose you or not. So what happened?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  I decided that I would, with this one precious opportunity that I had been working for since my childhood, that I would do my absolute best. And I did.

• 32:33Ina Garten?

  And what was the audition? What did you have to do?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  It's just five minutes of characters and impressions and stuff. And so I worked on it really hard, and I practiced it in front of people, and I asked their opinion. And I worked harder on that five minutes than I had on most things in my life. And then afterwards, I just sort of waited and hoped and prayed.

• 32:58Ina Garten?

  So then you got the call?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:00Ina Garten?

  Who called?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  I think it was one of the producers, or maybe it was Lauren himself, I forget. And I was living in L.A. at the time, disaster. Anyway, I was walking on the sidewalk, the sun beating down. The call came, and I sank to my knees, not because I had to, but because I wanted to be able to say, years later, "I sank to my knees. I wanted to tell you that on this podcast." I thought, "If I'm ever in Ina Garten's apartment..." "I want to be able to tell her that I sank to my knees when I got the call." So I'm glad I did.

• 33:43Ina Garten?

  I'm glad you did, too. And everybody on the planet is glad you went to SNL. It's just so wonderful. So what did you read as a kid?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  I read a lot. I read a lot of Pippi Longstocking. And I read... I loved tales of misfits. I mean, most of the books in the middle-grade genre, which these books are, are about misfits because the genre itself deals with questions of identity.

• 34:18Ina Garten?

  And everybody feels like a misfit in that genre. I mean, there's one person who feels like the most popular girl in the class, but everybody else is a misfit, right?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And I find that in real life, even the popular girl

• 34:33Ina Garten?

  doesn't know that.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  is a misfit. When she goes home and is going to sleep and is staring at the wall, is a misfit. I think that... So for me, it's my favorite literary genre, and I still read a lot of middle grade because it deals with questions of that feeling of being a misfit and questions of, "What am I going to do about it? Am I going to lean into that? Or am I going to pull back and then become, you know, a politician? Am I going to... Or what am I going to do with this person that I'm discovering that I am? Am I going to celebrate it? Or am I going to try to fit in and hide that which I know makes me unique?"

• 35:20Speaker 01

  And I think that's the question of... That's the work of our entire lives, and it begins when we're, you know, 12.

• 35:28Ina Garten?

  That's really true. It really is because I think when you're at that age, your instinct is to try and fit in so people like you. But I think that you found people like you because of your sense of humor. So you could be quirky and still fit in. Fit in, am I right?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Well, they didn't like me... Yeah, no, I didn't... Like, I was not... I don't know if you can believe this. I was not the most popular girl in my grade.

• 36:00Ina Garten?

  Nobody was.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  No one was. Not even the most popular girl was the most popular girl. But I was really not the most popular girl. But they did laugh when I did impressions and voices. And so I leaned into that and then eventually made a career of it.

• 36:16Ina Garten?

  And how wonderful that they did, that you found a way to have a connection with people, and it became your career. That's who you are. It's just wonderful. And I will toast to that, to Kate McKinnon, always being the most popular girl. And you are. Nobody knows how gorgeous you are. You're always playing some older guy or some woman, some older woman, some frumpy person. And in person, you're just gorgeous.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Thank you, I appreciate that. You're stunning, you're reading.

• 36:50Ina Garten?

  This is Kate McKinnon embarrassed.

• 36:55Ina Garten?

  I love you, too.

• 37:00Ina Garten?

  Happy Hour is hosted by me, Ina Garten. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman, Suzie Lechtenberg, Ali Jaffe Ramis, and Deborah Davis. Kate Tyler is a contributing producer, and Justine Dom, a senior producer. Mica Pollan-Bon is our associate producer. Tim Fernandez is the video editor, with sound recording by Joe Plourde. Our camera operators for this episode are Joe Valenzuela and Zoe Gregoric. Music for the show is by Pink Martini. Special thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe. Happy Hour is produced by Good Weight Productions and is a Vox Media podcast.