Hello, Molly!

A Memoir

Molly Shannon, Sean Wilsey

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063056251
• Print ISBN:
  9780063056244
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

A New York Times bestseller

A candid, compulsively readable, hilarious, and heartbreaking memoir of resilience and redemption by comedic genius Molly Shannon

At age four, Molly Shannon’s world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress.

From there, Molly ventured into the wider world of New York and Los Angeles show business, where she created her own opportunities and developed her daring and empathetic comedy. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories involving everyone from Whitney Houston to Adam Sandler to Monica Lewinsky, many told for the first time here, Hello, Molly! spans Molly’s time on Saturday Night Live—where she starred alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan, and Jimmy Fallon, among many others. At the same time, it explores with humor and candor her struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her father, a man who both fostered her gifts and drive and was left with the impossible task of raising his kids alone after the loss of her mother.

Witty, winning, and told with tremendous energy and heart, Hello, Molly!, written with Sean Wilsey, sheds new and revelatory light on the life and work of one of our most talented and free-spirited performers.

Part One

Ohio

Chapter 1

Bad Girl

I WENT TO A NUN/PSYCHIATRIST WHO ASKED ME TO DRAW A picture of my family. I drew a picture where my dad had really long arms and all of the women had chopped-off arms.

She asked, “Why don’t the women have arms?”

I said, “Oh, I don’t know.”

I’m sure if somebody analyzed the drawing enough, everything would start to fit together.

MY SISTER AND I stayed in the hospital for a while, because nobody knew where we were going to live while our dad recuperated. Different relatives were fighting over who was going to take us.

We ended up going to my aunt Bernie’s house. She was grieving because she had lost Fran, her daughter, but she took Mary and me in, and then my dad ended up getting out of the hospital a few months later and coming to live with his sister and her husband, my uncle John. My dad slept in their dining room. They put a hospital bed and bed pans in there. He had to relearn how to walk with a walker. He would practice walking slowly around their living room. It took him another year to rehabilitate. And he would always need a leg brace. When I got older I’d sometimes feel impatient at how slow he was. Ugh, I’d think, I wish he could walk faster, and just normally. I’d want to jump into his arms and sit in his lap but I had to be very careful. I could hurt him.

So we lived at my aunt’s house and I went to kindergarten in their neighborhood.

One time, Aunt Bernie caught me downstairs. I had started making up little masturbation scenarios and my games were character-driven. I had tied myself to a chair with a jump rope and was acting out a fantasy about a mean, very critical, lady gym teacher who barked, “Get down on the mat! Do twenty push-ups—now!”

I then said, “Ugh!” and had to get out of the chair.

I played both roles. I stuffed my pants with clothes so I could touch myself without touching myself, using the fabric as a little layer of fat/insulation, and, pretending to be the gym teacher, yelled, “Time to get out of the chair, Fattie!”

I remember Aunt Bernie came down, saw this scene, and was so disturbed. She was obviously thinking, What the fuck is going on with this little four-and-a-half-year-old? She looked horrified. She didn’t know how to handle it. She turned right around and pretended she hadn’t seen anything.

THE PRIEST AT ST. Dominic School, Father Murray, was the first person who acknowledged how sad I was. He knelt down after mass one day, held my hands, looked into my eyes, and said with his thick Irish brogue, “Molly. I know you lost your mother. That’s very sad. That’s very hard. You lost your sister, Katie. You lost your cousin. So sad, so hard for you. God bless you.”

I thought to myself, Oh my God, I’m in love. I think I love Father Murray. He’s really handsome. He has big, thick eyebrows and a kind face. Wow. This is serious. He’s handsome and he understands me in a deep way. He was my first crush.

Nobody else knew how to talk to kids. I imagined adults having conversations with each other, saying, “Just don’t talk about it! Don’t bring that up! It’ll make her too sad.” I couldn’t expect them to know how deep the ache felt. Father Murray understood and I loved him for it.

WHILE LIVING AT AUNT BERNIE’S, I was walking down the street with my cousin, Jack, her teenage son. Jack was a really good artist, eccentric and daring and fun—and also grieving his sister.

A teenage girl drove up in a baby-blue convertible. She was sexy and sucking on a lollipop.

She stopped, looked at Jack, and asked him, “Want a lollipop? Want a lick? Want to come with me?”

Jack just said, “Yeah.”

She lured him into the car with her lollipop. He hopped in and they drove away, really fast. It was terrifying—all mixed up in my mind with my mom and my sister being gone so suddenly. I was convinced she’d stolen him away. I just thought, He is never, ever, ever gonna come back!

I ran to my aunt in hysterics.

Aunt Bernie told me, “Oh, no, I think he’ll be back.”

I didn’t believe her. I thought that when people went away they never came back.

KATIE HAD FOLLOWED ME around everywhere I went. She would imitate me and do whatever I told her to do. When we played house my name was always Marge. And her name was always Marge, too.

“We’re going to the store. What is your name going to be, Katie?”

“Marge,” she’d answer seriously, in her three-year-old voice.

“Get my purse, Marge,” I’d say.

When our parents drove us to school, I would point out imaginary dragons to Katie. We pretended the Pegasus on the Mobil gas signs was one, and we would duck down in the car so that it couldn’t get us. So we’d be safe.

Now I went grocery shopping with my aunt Bernie every week. She would bend down and tie my shoes and try to teach me the knots, and I’d feel this ache in my heart. I thought, Katie should be learning how to tie her shoes, too! She should be here. She’s missing all this fun stuff. She would have loved this!

I would clench my fists and say, “That’s not fair! Katie should be learning to tie her shoes!”

My aunt would make me sandwiches and I would wrinkle up my nose at her because she didn’t cut the crusts off, the way my mom had done. I wanted her to do things exactly as my mom had. It upset me that she didn’t. I felt that I wasn’t coming home to the life that I’d left.

I would plead, “No! Mommy always cuts the crusts off!”

She would just patiently say, “Show me exactly how your mom does it.”

SEPTEMBER CAME. KINDERGARTEN STARTED. I felt like I had been through a war.

On the first day of school, I was outside waiting for the bus with a few kids, and we were all getting impatient. I decided to try something.

“Oh, are you guys waiting for the bus?” I said. “It already came!”

They were surprised, but then they just shrugged and started walking to school. When the bus came, I had it all to myself. We drove by the kids I’d tricked and I waved to them. I couldn’t believe they were that gullible. It was so fun. It gave me a feeling of deep pleasure—and distracted me from all the sadness. Being a trickster lightened the weight of all that had happened.

IN SCHOOL I MISBEHAVED around female teachers—out of fear that I’d disappoint them the way I must’ve disappointed my mom. And I must have disappointed her. I must be defective. Otherwise, why would she have left? All I could think was I did something bad to make her leave. So I acted bad around teachers to keep from getting close to them. That way I’d never get hurt again. I’ll be bad first. I’ll leave you first. I could be in control and they wouldn’t surprise me by leaving. I would disappoint them first.

I expected them to leave. And that continued all through grade school. I didn’t get close to female teachers. But the truth was I felt like these teachers couldn’t really see how hard I was struggling. There wasn’t anybody who was really thinking, Hey, this little girl lost her mom, so she’s acting out.

Beginning in kindergarten, I sought out the worst-behaved boys and did what they were doing. Even though I knew how to draw and was a good little artist, I would just paint a whole canvas black during art class, copying what the bad boys did. But I knew in my heart that I was a good person. Even when my teacher would put me in the corner with the bad kids, the bad boys, I knew I wasn’t really bad. Whatever, I thought. She doesn’t understand me. Who cares? I’ll just sit here with these bad boys.

When my sister’s class was making Mother’s Day cards, Mary told her teacher, “I don’t have a mother. What should I do?”

The teacher said, “Oh, just go ahead and make a card anyway.”

Both of us felt so let down by these teachers who were so clueless.

Later that school year I tripped and fell by the entrance to my classroom where we hung up our coats. A nail hit my knee and I wailed. As I was crying on the ground, all that I had been through suddenly hit me. I cried for a very long time, for everything that had happened to me up to that point. I really let it all out. People thought it was about the fall, but it was really about everything. I couldn’t hold it together anymore.

I was four years old, my mother was dead, my sister Katie was dead, my father had just gotten out of the hospital, my whole world had collapsed, and there I was, trying to sing “The Wheels on the Bus.”

AUNT BERNIE’S DOG, a standard poodle named Doffney, was so sweet to me after the accident. I used to lay my head on her body and take a nap. I would fall asleep on her in the kitchen after school and Doffney wouldn’t move till I woke up from my nap. I would sleep on her every day and she would just stay there, so sweet.

One night Aunt Bernie washed our hair and dried it in one of those big old-fashioned blow dryers that came down over your head. With our clean hair Mary and I watched The Wizard of Oz. Until the Wicked Witch of the West—played by Margaret Hamilton, who was from Cleveland—told Dorothy, “I’ll get you my pretty—and your little dog, too!” And I just shouted, “No! No!”

She was terrifying.

Aunt Bernie got up and turned off the set, saying, “Molly’s too upset. We have to shut this off.”

It wasn’t too much for Mary. She wanted to watch the witch. And she was so disappointed. But I just couldn’t handle it.

After I turned five and Mary turned seven, Aunt Bernie threw us a joint birthday party in the park. She served pigs in a blanket and vanilla cake. Mary got sick. She was upset because Mommy would have known she liked chocolate cake.

WHEN HE WAS STILL far from recovered, my dad, who’d been practicing moving around the living room with his walker, decided to move out of Aunt Bernie’s. He was fed up with Aunt Bernie’s husband, John Schulte.

My dad didn’t like the way Uncle John made everyone live with all these rules.

“No dogs in the living room!”

“Finish your peas!”

So when Bernie and John went to church on Sunday mornings, my dad would break the rules.

Dogs on the sofa!

Peas in the trash!

Also, Aunt Bernie had never told my uncle John what my mom had said about the rough ride home. Because if she had, he’d have asked why she’d let their daughter get in the car and ride home with my dad driving. That tension was always in the air.

SO WE HAD TO GO. My aunt Bernie told me years later that when we left her house to go home, I held on to her so tight...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Author Note
• Prologue: The Accident
• Part One: Ohio
• Part Two: Freedom
• Part Three: Baby, This Is It
• Part Four: Good Endings
• Acknowledgments
• Photo Section
• About the Author
• Also by Molly Shannon
• Copyright
• About the Publisher