‘SNL’ Alum Kate McKinnon Reveals She Was Diagnosed With Geographic Tongue (Exclusive)

Leave it to Kate McKinnon to have a little fun with a benign medical diagnosis.

The SNL alum, 41, who is featured in this week’s One Last Thing, was asked about the last screenshot or picture she took on her phone. “I took a photo of my tongue and sent it to an actor friend of mine,” she says. “We both have the same medical condition. It’s called geographic tongue. Your tongue sheds in patches and looks like an atlas, hence the name ‘geographic tongue.'”

According to Mayo Clinic, geographic tongue is an inflammatory but harmless condition affecting the surface of the tongue. Patches on the tongue are missing papillae, which are tiny, pinkish-white bumps, and look like a map. They often appear in one area and then move to a different part of the tongue.

“It’s gross,” McKinnon adds. “We brag about how geographic we are on any given day. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this in a magazine.”

The actress, who is releasing her children’s book, Secrets of the Purple Pearl, the second in her series The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, and stars in the movie The Roses, shared more with PEOPLE for One Last Thing:

Last obsession
I am obsessed with the lifestyle vlog of a family in the mountains of Azerbaijan who grow and prepare copious amounts of gorgeous food. There is no dialogue. The mother, Aziza, has these big hands and these giant enamel bowls and she’ll just punch out a batch of dough for 80 meat pies. She pickles 100 pounds of cucumbers with the ease that most people chew gum. Her rolling pin is five feet long. I’m not sure who’s eating all the meat pies.

Last life hack I learned
You can lacto-ferment any vegetable by putting them in a big clean jar with water to cover and then you weigh all that and subtract the weight of the jar, and then multiply that by .035 and then add that amount of salt (by weight), shake it up and let it sit for 7 days. I’ve been fermenting. Aziza made me do it!

Last DIY project
I put up these faux-beams on my bedroom ceiling. I sourced the wood and cut it and oiled it and treated it for bugs and installed it and fixed it and it took me three years. But the skills I gained will last a lifetime. I love skills.  

Last thing I took from a set
I was given—I didn’t steal—a chess piece from the Barbie set. The set and prop designers for Barbie were the most incredible artists and artisans and the stuff they made to fill out the world of the Dreamhouse and the Weird Barbie house really should be in a museum. They made a full chess set with these chess pieces in Weird Barbie aesthetic and they were so magical, and I was given, I want say it was a bishop? Tough to tell.

Last impulse purchase
I just bought a portable band saw that electricians and plumbers use to cut metal-threaded rod, copper pipe, etc. Whenever I have to cut metal I’m sweating and grunting with a hacksaw. I’ve wanted one for about a year and I woke up today and I was like, “Today’s the day.”

Last moment of pride
I’ve been doing a lot of audio recording lately with my sister Emily Lynne. We’re recording a scripted series for Audible that we wrote and we also just recorded the audiobook of my second novel for children. She’s so brilliant and so kind and we are so in sync and I’m just so grateful that the person I would choose out of 8 billion people to be my sister happens to be my sister.

Last time I was starstruck
I met Jesse Palmer at the SNL 50^th Anniversary Special. I am always so starstruck anytime I meet someone from the Bachelor universe. I think I would be most starstruck if I met someone from the HGTV universe. If I met Aziza I would fall at her feet.

Secrets of the Purple Pearl, the second book in The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science series will hit bookshelves on Sept. 30.

The Roses is now in theaters.