If you find it odd that Kate McKinnon chose her first book to be for middle-grade kids, the former “Saturday Night Live” star says, think again.“I find sketch comedy and middle school to be very similar,” she said recently over Zoom.“There can be an unabashed silliness in middle grade that I have found only in sketch comedy.”“The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science,” now available, follows the three Porch sisters, Gertrude, Eugenia, and Dee-Dee, who feel that they don't fit in their hoity-toity town.
They live with their snooty aunt and uncle and equally snooty seven cousins — all named Lavinia.When the Porch girls are kicked out of school, they find a new mentor in an outrageous scientist with worms in her hair named Millicent Quibb.
In a Q&A, McKinnon spoke about her childhood and "The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science,” which she wrote mostly from her bed.“I ended up staying in bed for a year, basically,” she laughed.
The plan is that this is book No.1 in a series.Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.___MCKINNON: I started writing this before “SNL," and worked on it throughout, whenever I had a moment, and picked it right back up after I left.
I like weirdos.I am a weirdo.
I like playing weirdos, and I like reaching out to fellow weirdos.And this was just another venue for doing that.
MCKINNON: I was surprised by how much it felt like performing.I felt like I was improvising.
It felt like sitting in a room and writing a sketch for “SNL,” but then you just have a lot more time to revise.I absolutely love it.
I’m an introvert, so writing by myself does not bother me.As much as I miss my colleagues, it suits me in some way.
MCKINNON: I had parents who celebrated my weird, little activities and let me take the clamshells home when we had linguine and clams at a restaurant.They bought me little archeological kits and just really fostered whatever...