Kate McKinnon: The Life Story Behind the SNL Star

A Musical House on Long Island

Kate McKinnon was born on 6 January 1984, in Sea Cliff, New York, a small village on the north shore of Long Island, where the houses sit close to the water and the trains carry people into Manhattan every morning. Her full name is Kate McKinnon Berthold, though the world knows her by the shorter form. Her mother, Laura Campbell, raised Kate and her younger sister, Emily Lynne, in a home where music never really stopped. There was a piano in the house, and Kate learned to play it as a child, sitting at the keys for hours, working out tunes by ear. She also learned the cello, an instrument that asks for patience, because a single wrong movement of the bow can ruin a note. That patience, learned young, would shape everything she did later. A cello does not forgive a careless player, and neither does a live audience.

Her father, Michael Thomas McKinnon, was an architect, a man who designed buildings and who loved music too. When Kate was eighteen, he died. The loss hit the family hard, and it changed Kate. She has spoken about that time only rarely, and always with care, but those who know her say it made her both tougher and more open. She learned early that life can break without warning, and she learned to keep going anyway. Her sister Emily, who would also become a comedian, was her closest friend through those years, and the two girls made each other laugh in a house that needed laughter. They put on shows for their family, they copied the people they saw on television, and they turned the pain of ordinary days into jokes that only they understood. That habit, of finding the funny shape inside a hard feeling, stayed with Kate for the rest of her life.

School in Sea Cliff gave her more stages. She acted in school plays, she sang, she played her instruments, and she discovered that she could make a room full of strangers laugh by becoming someone else for a few minutes. She was not a loud child in the way some comic children are loud. She was watchful. She studied the way her teachers spoke, the way her neighbours moved, the way a voice could change when a person was nervous or proud, and she stored those details away. Years later, when she played famous people on television, audiences would say she had caught them exactly, and the catching had started here, on Long Island, in classrooms and living rooms where a quiet girl paid closer attention than anyone else.

Columbia, New York Stages, and Finding Her Voice

After school, Kate went to Columbia University in New York City, where she studied theatre and graduated in 2006. Columbia gave her two things she needed. It gave her training, in acting classes where she learned to build a character from the ground up, and it gave her New York itself, a city where a young performer could see a different show every night. She joined the university’s comedy life, performing in sketch and improv groups, and she learned how to write a joke, how to cut a joke that did not work, and how to stand on a stage with nothing but her voice and her nerve. She also kept playing music, because music had always been the way she understood feeling. A song can say in three minutes what a speech cannot say in an hour, and Kate carried that idea into her comedy.

New York after college was not easy. She took small jobs, she auditioned, she performed in rooms that were half empty, and she kept writing. She joined the Upright Citizens Brigade, the improv theatre where many young New York comics learned their craft, and she performed there night after night, building scenes from nothing with partners she trusted. Those nights taught her to think fast, to listen hard, and to commit to a choice even when the choice was strange. A performer who hesitates loses the audience. Kate learned not to hesitate. She would walk on stage, pick a voice, pick a body, and play it all the way, even if the voice was odd and the body was stranger. That courage, to be strange in public, became her signature.

The Big Gay Sketch Show and a First Television Home

In 2007, a new door opened. Logo, a cable channel aimed at gay and lesbian viewers, launched The Big Gay Sketch Show, and Kate joined its cast. The show gave gay and lesbian comedians a place to perform at a time when such a place was rare on American television, and Kate stayed with it for three seasons, until 2010. She played dozens of characters, from sharp-tongued New Yorkers to soft-spoken oddballs, and she learned how television comedy is made. A sketch on television is not like a sketch on a small stage. The camera is close, the audience is at home, and a small movement of the face can do the work of a loud gesture. Kate learned to play for the camera, to let a look carry a joke, to trust that the people watching would catch the detail.

The show also mattered to Kate in a personal way. She is a lesbian, and she has never hidden it, though she has also never made it the centre of her public life. Working on a show that spoke openly to gay audiences, at a time when few shows did, gave her a home. She could be funny about who she was without explaining herself, and she could play characters who were gay, straight, strange, or ordinary, with the same freedom. When the show ended, she took that freedom with her. She went back to the New York stages, she performed in more improv and sketch shows, and she waited for the next door to open. She did not know that the next door would be the biggest one in American comedy.

Joining Saturday Night Live in 2012

The next door opened in 2012. Saturday Night Live, the NBC sketch show that had launched so many comic careers, invited Kate to audition, and she won a place in the cast. She joined in the spring of that year, in the middle of the season, which is a hard way to arrive, because the other performers already know each other and the writers already have their habits. Kate did not try to fit in by copying anyone. She brought her own people with her, the voices and bodies she had been collecting since childhood, and she put them on the screen one by one. Within months, audiences knew her name. She was the first openly gay woman in the show’s cast, a fact that mattered to many viewers, and she carried it lightly, letting the work speak first.

Her Hillary Clinton became famous during the 2016 election, when Clinton ran for president. Kate did not play Clinton as a joke. She played her as a woman who had waited a long time, who was tired, who was determined, and who could not quite say what she felt.

The Clinton Years and the Night the Show Went Quiet

Playing a real candidate in an election year is a strange job, because the news changes every day and the sketch must change with it. Kate studied Clinton for months before she felt ready. She watched old interviews, she listened to the way Clinton’s voice rose when she was sure of herself and fell when she was tired, she noticed the small laugh Clinton used when a question made her uneasy, and she copied the way Clinton held her hands when she stood at a podium. She did not copy the voice alone. She copied the feeling behind the voice, the feeling of a woman who had spent her whole life preparing for a job that kept moving out of reach. When the sketches aired, even people who did not like Clinton said the impression was fair, because Kate had found the person inside the politician, and the person was trying hard, and trying hard is something everyone understands.

The work grew heavier as the election went on. Each Saturday, the writers gave Kate new lines about the week’s debates, the leaked emails, the polls, and the crowds, and each Saturday she had to make those lines funny without making the woman she played look small. She walked a thin line, and she walked it well, because she treated Clinton with respect. Then, in November 2016, Clinton lost. The country was shocked, and so was the show. The next Saturday, Kate opened the programme alone, dressed as Clinton, sitting at a piano. She sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, slowly, without jokes, without a laugh, and the studio was silent. It became one of the most talked-about moments in the show’s history, because it showed that a comedy show could hold grief, and that Kate could hold it. She did not explain the song. She did not need to. The audience understood that the woman at the piano was saying goodbye to a hope, and that the actress at the piano was saying goodbye too. She also played Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice, as a tough, funny old woman who did exercises and gave orders, and audiences loved her for it. Ginsburg herself enjoyed the impression, which is the highest praise an impression can earn.

The People She Carried Inside Her

What set Kate apart on the show was not one impression. It was the number of people she could carry inside her. She played Olya Povlatsky, a Russian woman who talked about her hard life with a strange pride. She played Sheila Sovage, a woman who drank too much at a bar and told strangers her secrets. She played Barbara DeDrew, a woman who could not stop talking about her cats and her disappointments. She played Miss Rafferty, a woman who had been taken by aliens and who described the experience with a calm that made it funnier. She played Dr. Wayne Wenowdis, a man with odd ideas about science. Each one had a different voice, a different walk, a different way of holding a glass or a microphone, and Kate switched between them with a speed that looked like magic. It was not magic. It was years of watching people, and years of practice, and a memory for voices that few performers have.

Her work won awards. In 2016 and again in 2017, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, for her work on the show. She was the first performer from the show to win that award in years, and she won it twice in a row, which told the industry what audiences already knew. She was not only funny. She was exact. She could take a real person, find the truth of that person, and give it back to the audience in a way that made them laugh and think at the same time. She was nominated for the award several more times, and she stayed on the show for ten years, until 2022, longer than most performers manage, because the show kept finding new people for her to become. The awards mattered to her, but they were not the reason she worked. She worked because each new person was a puzzle, and she liked puzzles. A voice is a puzzle. A walk is a puzzle. A laugh that hides a fear is a puzzle. Kate solved them one by one, on live television, in front of millions of people, and the solving was the joy.

Ghostbusters, Film Roles, and a Wider Screen

In 2016, while she was still on the show, Kate took the film role that made her a movie name. In Ghostbusters, the new version of the 1984 comedy, she played Jillian Holtzmann, a wild and brilliant scientist who loved to build strange machines. Holtzmann was odd, fearless, and funny in a way that felt new, and Kate played her with a joy that jumped off the screen. She licked her lips, she grinned, she took apart machines with her bare hands, and audiences loved her for it. The film did not please everyone, but Kate’s performance did, and it showed that she could carry a film role as well as a sketch. People who had never watched the sketch show went to see the film and came out asking who that scientist was, and the answer was a woman they would now follow into any role. Holtzmann also gave Kate something the sketch show never could, a character who lasted for two hours, who had time to grow, and who did not have to win the audience in ninety seconds. After that, film offers came steadily. She appeared in Rough Night in 2017, a comedy about a bachelorette party that goes wrong. She appeared in The Spy Who Dumped Me in 2018, as a friend who gets pulled into a world of spies. She appeared in Yesterday in 2019, as a sharp music manager, and in Bombshell the same year, as a young woman working at a television news channel. In 2023 she played Weird Barbie in Barbie, the doll who had been played with too hard, with messy hair and a face full of marker pen, and she stole every scene she was in, because Weird Barbie was wise, funny, and kind, all at once.

Kate also worked as a voice actor, a job that suited her gift for voices. She voiced Ms. Frizzle in The Magic School Bus Rides Again, the Netflix series that brought back the famous teacher, and she voiced Lupe in Ferdinand, the animated film about a gentle bull. Voice work asks an actor to do everything with sound alone, and Kate, who had trained her ear since childhood, was made for it. She also played Carole Baskin in Joe vs Carole, a 2022 series about the woman at the centre of the Tiger King story, a role that asked her to be serious, strange, and sympathetic at once, and she did it without winking at the audience.

The Quiet Rules She Lives By

Kate has always kept her private life private, and that choice is part of who she is. She does not talk about her relationships in interviews, she does not share her home life on social media, and she does not explain herself to strangers. That silence is not coldness. It is a boundary, drawn by a woman who gives everything to an audience for ninety minutes on a Saturday night and then takes the rest of the week for herself. Her sister Emily, who is also a comedian, understands that boundary, because she lives behind one too. The two sisters have stayed close through all the years of fame, and they still make each other laugh in the way only sisters can, with jokes that no one else in the room would understand. That closeness is a thread that runs through Kate’s whole life, from the house in Sea Cliff to the stages of New York, and it has kept her steady when the work around her grew loud.

She has also kept a simple rule about the work itself. She takes the role that interests her, not the role that pays the most or makes the most noise. That is why her career looks so varied, a sketch show here, a voice role there, a children’s book, a serious drama, a musical doll. She follows her curiosity, and her curiosity has never run out. Friends who work with her say she is kind on a set, that she learns the names of the crew, that she arrives ready, and that she treats a small part with the same care as a big one. Those are not the things that win awards, but they are the things that make people want to work with her again, and in a business where everyone talks, a good name is worth more than a good review.

A Book, a Farewell, and Life After the Show

In October 2024, Kate published a children’s book, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, a story about a school for girls who love science, invention, and trouble. The book was funny, strange, and full of the same spirit that had run through her comedy since she was a child. It showed that her imagination did not need a stage or a camera. It could live on a page, in the hands of a young reader, and it could tell that reader that being odd is a good thing. The book was the start of a new kind of work for Kate, work that she could make on her own, at her own speed, without a live audience waiting for the next joke. She wrote it for the girl she had once been, the girl at the piano in Sea Cliff who liked strange ideas and who did not fit neatly into any one box, and she wrote it for every child who feels the same way now. A book is a quieter kind of performance, but it lasts longer than a sketch, and Kate understood that. A sketch is gone by Sunday morning. A book stays on a shelf, waiting for the next reader.

She had left Saturday Night Live in May 2022, at the end of the show’s forty-seventh season, after ten years. Her farewell was quiet, in keeping with the way she had always worked. She did not make a big speech about herself. She played her characters one last time, she thanked the people she had worked with, and she walked away. Since then she has chosen her work carefully, taking film and voice roles that interest her, writing, and keeping her private life out of the public eye. She has never been a performer who chases fame for its own sake. She chases the next person to become, the next voice to learn, the next story to tell. That is why audiences still follow her. They know that when Kate McKinnon appears, she will not play herself. She will become someone new, and the new person will feel real, because Kate spent her whole life learning how to watch, how to listen, and how to disappear into the people she loves.

My Take:

When I think about Kate McKinnon, I think first about how rare it is to meet a performer who can disappear into a character so completely. Many actors play themselves in every role, with a different costume. Kate does the opposite. She becomes Hillary Clinton, she becomes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she becomes Holtzmann, she becomes Weird Barbie, and each one feels like a different person. That is not a trick. It comes from studying people closely, from listening to their voices, from watching how they move, and from caring about the truth of who they are. I admire that range more than any single sketch, because it shows a lifetime of work and a love of people.

I love her Hillary Clinton because it is not a simple impression. It is a study of a woman who is smart, who is serious, and who is trying to be heard in a world that often does not listen to women. Kate plays her with respect, with humour, and with a sense that she understands the weight of the job. After the election, when she sang Hallelujah as Hillary, the performance became one of the most talked-about moments in the show’s history. It was sad, it was funny, and it was honest, and it showed that Kate could do more than make people laugh. She could make them feel, and she could help them to grieve. That is a rare gift, and it is a gift that comes from a deep understanding of people.

Her Ruth Bader Ginsburg is another character I think about often, because it shows how Kate can play a serious person with humour and with respect. Ginsburg was a Supreme Court justice, a woman who was both serious and funny, and Kate found the small voice, the sharp mind, and the humour in her. She did not make fun of Ginsburg. She celebrated her, and she showed the audience why Ginsburg mattered. That is a kind of comedy that is also a kind of tribute, and it is a kind of work that takes both skill and heart. Kate has both, and she uses them well.

Ghostbusters matters to me because Holtzmann is a character who is joyful, strange, and brilliant, all at the same time. Kate plays her with an energy that is easy to love, and she makes the audience want to be her friend. Holtzmann loves to build machines, she loves ghosts, and she loves her work, and Kate plays that love with an honesty that is rare. Many comic characters are funny because they are angry or because they are sad. Holtzmann is funny because she is happy, because she loves what she does, and because she is not afraid to be strange. That is a different kind of comedy, and it is a kind that I admire, because it shows that joy can be funny too.

Barbie is another film I think about, because Weird Barbie is a doll who has been played with too hard, whose hair is cut, whose face is drawn on, and who lives apart from the other Barbies. Kate plays her with a care that makes the audience love her, even though she is different. Weird Barbie is funny, she is wise, and she is a little bit sad, and Kate plays all of those sides without making her into a joke. I think many viewers saw themselves in Weird Barbie, because many of us have felt different, have felt played with too hard, and have felt apart from the group. Kate understands that feeling, and she plays it with humour and with heart.

I also think about her time on The Big Gay Sketch Show, because it shows how important it is to be honest about who you are. Kate was openly gay, and she was proud of who she was, and she showed that a gay woman could be a star in comedy. That honesty helped many young people who felt the same way, because it showed them that they were not alone, and that it was okay to be themselves. I respect that honesty, because it turns a private truth into a public kindness. She did not have to share it, and she did, and that makes a difference to people who are still learning to be themselves.

My only complaint is that too few people have seen how wide her abilities stretch beyond one show. Plenty of viewers first found her on Saturday nights, and they still see her only as a sketch player. They do not know her films, or her voice work, or her work as a singer and musician. That is not her fault. The blame sits with a culture that loves to file every performer under one neat label. Kate has refused to stay in one box, and I admire that refusal. She has shown that a comic actor can also be a dramatic actor, a singer, a writer, and a kind person, and that each role can be done well.

I think her legacy will be about transformation. She transforms herself into other people, she transforms a sketch into a story, and she transforms an audience’s view of a person. She also transforms herself, from a girl in Sea Cliff to a student at Columbia to a star on Saturday Night Live to a film actor in Barbie. Each step was a transformation, and each one taught her something new. That is a good way to live a working life. You do not have to stay the same. You can change, you can learn, and you can become someone new, again and again.

For a young reader, I think the lesson from Kate McKinnon is to be brave enough to be strange. She was a girl who loved theatre, who studied at Columbia, and who became a star by playing characters who were strange, funny, and true. She did not try to be like everyone else. She trusted her own strange instincts, and viewers warmed to her precisely because she did. That message carries hope for anyone who has felt unlike the crowd. You do not have to hide what makes you strange. You can take your own material, work it over time, and shape something nobody else could shape. Kate did, and you can too.

Her story reminds me that a career can wander through music, sketch, film, and books and still hold together. Kate started in theatre, she became a sketch actor, she became a television star, she became a film actor, and she became a voice actor. Every turn in her journey demanded a different skill, and she picked each one up as she went. That is a good way to live a working life. You do not have to know everything at the start. You need only stay open to learning, keep trying, and press on when the route shifts. Kate has done that, and she has done it with grace.

In the end, I think Kate McKinnon teaches us that comedy can be transformative. She draws laughter and a lump in the throat from the same moment, and neither feeling cancels the other. Such range is a scarce gift, and it comes from a life that has mixed delight with long, hard labour. I will keep seeking out whatever she makes next, because each new character of hers has revealed a facet I had missed, and that is the highest praise I know how to give.

I keep thinking about the way Kate uses music in her comedy, because she is a singer and a piano player as well as an actor. She learned music as a child in Sea Cliff, she sang in a group at Columbia, and she brought that love of music into her sketches on Saturday Night Live. When she plays a character who sings, she does not just sing a joke. She sings with a real voice, with real feeling, and with a sense that music can tell a story that words cannot. That is a rare gift, and it is one that makes her performances feel complete. She is not only an actor. She is a musician, and she uses music the way other actors use a costume, to become someone else.

Her Hillary Clinton performance after the 2016 election stays with me because it was not just a sketch. It was a moment of grief, shared by millions of people, and Kate gave that grief a voice. She sang Hallelujah as Hillary, sitting at a piano, and the audience in the studio and at home felt the sadness in the room. It was a brave thing to do on a comedy show, because comedy is supposed to make people laugh, and this was a moment that made people cry. Kate did it anyway, because she understood that sometimes a show needs to be honest about how people feel, even when that feeling is sad. That honesty is a kind of courage, and it is a kind of kindness.

Weird Barbie is another character I think about often, because she is a doll who has been played with too hard, whose hair is cut, whose face is drawn on, and who lives apart from the other Barbies. Kate plays her with a care that makes the audience love her, even though she is different. Weird Barbie is funny, she is wise, and she is a little bit sad, and Kate plays all of those sides without making her into a joke. I think many viewers saw themselves in Weird Barbie, because many of us have felt different, have felt played with too hard, and have felt apart from the group. Kate understands that feeling, and she plays it with humour and with heart.

Her Ruth Bader Ginsburg is another character that stays with me, because it shows how Kate can play a serious person with humour and with respect. Ginsburg was a Supreme Court justice, a woman who was both serious and funny, and Kate found the small voice, the sharp mind, and the humour in her. She did not make fun of Ginsburg. She celebrated her, and she showed the audience why Ginsburg mattered. That is a kind of comedy that is also a kind of tribute, and it is a kind of work that takes both skill and heart. Kate has both, and she uses them well.

One more thought stays with me, and it is about transformation. Kate transforms herself into other people, she transforms a sketch into a story, and she transforms an audience’s view of a person. She also transforms herself, from a girl in Sea Cliff to a student at Columbia to a star on Saturday Night Live to a film actor in Barbie. Each step was a transformation, and each one taught her something new. That is a good way to live a working life. You do not have to stay the same. You can change, you can learn, and you can become someone new, again and again.

I also think about the way Kate treats her fellow actors, because generosity on a set is easy to talk about and hard to practise. She listens in rehearsal, she gives a scene partner room to try something new, and she celebrates a good joke even when it is not hers. That attitude makes a whole cast better, and it is one reason directors and writers ask for her again and again. A star who shares the stage is worth more than a star who only shines alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Kate McKinnon born and where did she study?

Kate McKinnon was born on 6 January 1984 in Sea Cliff, New York, on Long Island, and she studied theatre at Columbia University in New York, graduating in 2006.

What was The Big Gay Sketch Show?

The Big Gay Sketch Show was a television series on Logo that began in 2007, in which Kate played many characters. It gave gay and lesbian comedians a place to perform, and Kate stayed on the show for three seasons.

When did Kate McKinnon join Saturday Night Live?

She joined Saturday Night Live in 2012 and stayed for ten years, leaving in 2022. During that time she played Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and many original characters.

Who did Kate McKinnon play in Ghostbusters?

She played Jillian Holtzmann, a wild and brilliant scientist who loves to build strange machines. The film came out in 2016, and Holtzmann became a favourite with audiences.

Who did Kate McKinnon play in Barbie?

She played Weird Barbie, a doll who had been played with too hard, whose hair was cut and whose face was drawn on. The film came out in 2023 and was a huge hit around the world.

Has Kate McKinnon won an Emmy Award?

Yes, she won Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on Saturday Night Live, and she has been nominated for many other awards during her career.