Kate McKinnon Talks Imposter Syndrome and How ‘SNL’ Influenced Her Writing

Kate McKinnon is looking back on how Saturday Night Live shaped her career as an author.

The comedian and writer, 41, spoke with Penn Badgley at a Sept. 30 event at 92NY, in honor of her new novel The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science — Secrets of the Purple Pearl.

The book is the second installment of McKinnon’s middle grade series about a trio of sisters who attend a school for mad scientists. The first book in the series, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, debuted in 2024, and took 12 years to write, McKinnon said.

But having a quicker deadline for its sequel wasn’t an issue, thanks to her time on SNL.

“I enjoyed having the tight turnaround because this happened to me when I was working on Saturday Night Live as well,” McKinnon explained. “I came in with what I thought was good material that I could use, and that would sustain me for, I don’t know, a season-and-a-half, and then I used it all. And then I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I have nothing.’”

“But then that forced me to think of things out of nowhere that ended up in the gutter and things that I labored over for years before that,” she added.

McKinnon, who left the late night sketch comedy show in 2022, also noted how much SNL taught her about the writing process.

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“I knew where it was going, plot-wise,” she said. “What took me 12 years, really, was learning how to write, which I did from watching people at Saturday Night Live write, and also sussing out what the scene was.”

“I knew I had these characters and this world. I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be funny,” she continued. “I didn’t know what I was trying to write about. And it seems I was trying to write about what to do with that feeling of being different. Because everyone has that, especially 12-year-olds, even the popular ones. They’re weird. They’re weird too. It’s less obvious, and maybe they have better clothes, but they’re weird too.”

The actress looked back on her own childhood love of books, particularly middle grade novels by Roald Dahl and Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

“It’s a genre that [is] typically fantasy,” McKinnon said, of why she loves middle grade reading. “They’re not yet making out with werewolves. But there are fewer pictures. It’s more words, and it deals with questions of identity and often using fantasy as a metaphor … I love it.”

But that doesn’t mean that being a creative person is necessarily easy. During the event’s audience Q&A, McKinnon admitted that she also suffered from imposter syndrome.

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“It’s really hard,” she said. “And I think that I venture to say that most people who are living a creative life, or putting anything out there for review, do suffer.”

“Mad science, to me, is also a metaphor for the joys and the pain of creative life. And I find incredible joy and incredible pain in it,” she continued. “I’m sensitive. I feel vulnerable when I put something out there. Some of the most powerful moments of my life have been in being vulnerable.”

The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science — Secrets of the Purple Pearl is now available, wherever books are sold.