Molly Shannon Opens Up About Tragedy in New Memoir, “Hello, Molly!”

Molly Shannon, actress and comedian, has recently opened up about some of the toughest parts of her life, including the tragic car accident that killed her mother, sister, and cousin. Her father, who struggled with alcoholism, was intoxicated while driving the car.

“He never really wavered from the story until his death. I did not blame him,” Shannon explained in a new interview. “We would talk about it.”

The Saturday Night Live alum details the event and her own perseverance through the dark times in her new memoir “Hello, Molly!” Shannon has said that writing the book made her “dig deep” into her own life, experiences, and who she has grown to become.

“People go, ‘Oh, was (writing the memoir) cathartic?'” Shannon shares, noting how difficult it was to look at the site of the crash on Google Maps for the first time. “And I’m like, ‘No, I’d already processed so much of that stuff in therapy.’ But then, in all honesty, yes, that was cathartic! I never knew that my dad had driven for 90 minutes, and we were 18 minutes from home. That was heartbreaking, to discover that.”

Throughout the memoir, Shannon reveals how finding her success as an actress and comedian was a rollercoaster of bright moments and sad moments.

“I had been driven to achieve, achieve, achieve,” she explains, “and I was running and working so hard at my show and trying to make it, make it, make it and then finally when I get on ‘SNL’ and I get Mary Katherine on, and people (are yelling) ‘Molly!’ They know my name, and they’re coming up to me on the streets. I fell into a depression for a few months because I was like, ‘The one person I really want to tell me that I’m good and say she’s proud of me is my mom, and this is not bringing her back.'”

Eventually, though, Shannon was able to find freedom from mourning in her art. “You can just enjoy being creative, life as an artist, doing what you love, pursuing your passions,” she says. “It gave me a very healthy perspective about fame and what it means, and I carry that with me to this day.”

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Photo credit: Silvia Elizabeth Pangaro / Shutterstock.com