How Jeanine Pirro Gives Cecily Strong a Chance to Clown Around on ‘Saturday Night Live’

Saturday Night Live has skewered politicians almost since its inception, but one of the best impersonations comes from Cecily Strong in the form of a drunken, manic Jeanine Pirro. Or, I guess, just Jeanine Pirro. For the last few seasons, the women of SNL have basked in the glow of an Emmy Award nomination in the Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series race, and it’s finally time that Cecily Strong gets the recognition she deserves.

You can tell that Strong is down for anything and that makes her such a valuable player in a time when we all need to laugh. While the performers on SNL sometimes only have a small amount of time to make an impression, one of Strong’s biggest assets is her voice. If you watch her sketches back-to-back, how she manipulates her voice differentiates her characters so distinctly. She could voice the entire cast of an animated show and you would think that it’s 20 different actors.

And then there’s her Jeanine Pirro. In a time when the country is not just divided but we are in actual danger of one another, Strong’s exaggerated, hilarious portrayal of a staunch supporter of President Trump’s administration is enough to keep us from crying. And then makes us cry from laughing.

With Strong’s first Emmy nomination, she did the impossible. She made me want to watch Republicans on television.

Awards Daily: What do you miss most about the weekly process of Saturday Night Live?

Cecily Strong: Oh wow. That’s tough.

AD: You know, besides everything.

CS: It really is everything. Even just doing the Zooms for the SNL At Home. There’s so many people who work there and I really genuinely love everyone. I’m so bad at names that there are people I know and I can’t remember them. And I can’t ask them anymore.

AD: (laughs)

CS: But they make you smile and you hug them. I miss all of that. It’s a job where you get to laugh every day. If you’re in a crappy mood, you get to laugh at work. I’m finding ways to laugh now, but I miss so much. I feel like my brain is atrophying. I have lost so much of my vocabulary (laughs).

AD: I think a lot of us can relate to that, though. It’s been months but everything is still an adjustment. I love what you do with your speaking voice. With every character, it’s so distinct whether it’s Cathy Anne or it’s the One-Dimensional Female Character in a Male-Driven Comedy and, obviously, Jeanine Pirro. Is that where you start when you build a character?

CS: That’s so nice of you to say. You’re one of the only people who has noticed that. I definitely try for that. I started as a more serious actress but with doing short sketches, there’s only so much character-y work you can do. I love leaving the table and people saying, ‘I want a full five minutes of that’ or ‘Who is that character? I need to know more.’

AD: Yeah.

CS: Voice is part of that. You are only seen when the camera is on you and the red light is on. I like to give as much as possible.

AD: Even with Tulsi Gabbard…and I don’t want to talk about her…

CS: Just in general?

AD: Yeah, she might appear. We don’t need that right now.

CS: (laughs). If we say her name three times…

AD: Even what you do in your submitted episode where you pop up as her for a few seconds, it’s really distinctive. I was very torn because I liked seeing what SNL does with her, but that would mean we would have to keep talking about her.

CS: I feel very similar to you. I felt it was good that we addressed her. It would’ve felt rude if we didn’t. I didn’t feel like that we were too rude to her but not great to her. It was silly and both sides can say, ‘They got her!’

AD: Political humor has been part of Saturday Night Live since its inception. Do you guys even care anymore with portraying people in this particular administration? As a whole, they care a lot about who is talking about them so does that give you more freedom with it?

CS: I have a lot of feelings about what’s going on and certain people out there. I don’t always play people on my side, but I don’t like to think anything is too low of a blow. There are moments, though, when I sometimes think, ‘Let’s get her.’ Playing Gretchen Whitmer did feel like a fist-bump to her, so I was happy to do that.

AD: I honestly think that your Jeanine Pirro is one of my favorite takedowns of anyone in politics in a long time. Your voicework, what you do with your body. She does this thing where she shakes her head as she makes a point straight to the camera. What was it like developing that? I wanted you to get a nomination the moment I saw you hurl yourself out of the chair on Weekend Update.

CS: Bryan Tucker, who writes it with me, tried to do a full sketch around her a few years ago, but I don’t think enough people knew of her yet. We do so much politics—and not that we shouldn’t—but it can be a little exhausting. Sometimes I just want to do clown stuff. When we brought her back, we needed to do something where it didn’t quite matter if you knew her show or not.

AD: Just making her a figure.

CS: Yes, just using her as inspiration for me to play a clown. That day I remember I was so serious about practicing my fall out of the chair. I wanted to know where my pillows were going to be so I could really throw myself. I am very serious about my clowning. The same thing with the barfing. I had to practice and that’s not easy.

AD: That has to be hard to time.

CS: Richie [Tache], our effects guy was running the tube and you have to start a little early, but I think that’s the fun of it. Doing the show for this long, it’s nice to feel a little bit looser. We don’t really improvise, but on Update we can a little bit.

AD: And torture Colin Jost as much as possible.

CS: He loves it! He’s totally in on it.

AD: It does look like he’s surprised by most of it.

CS: Sometimes he knows but we don’t get to really practice it. So I might say to him, ‘Do you mind if I throw up on you during this?’ And he just starts laughing. That’s what I mean when I say we get to play it looser. As Cathy Anne, I get to snap a lot at Michael [Che]. Those two are fun to make laugh. A little extra for them.

AD: Is there anything from the SNL At Home episodes that you might be able to bring back to the studio whenever that may be?

CS: Well, I want to get rid of all these Zoom apps eventually. It was a lot of technical things that I had to learn quickly. I am 187 years old when it comes to technology. It was time consuming when you want to spend time writing and rehearsing. More than anything, I think what I’ll take is having this time to sit with myself. It’s been so much slower not being on a show. Normally there’s pressure and anxiety getting the show up every weekend, but I love it. I’ve learned to be kinder to myself and even kinder to other people. When I do comedy, I want to do it from a place of joy anyway. The human parts of this have been my lessons. I feel like I’ve weirdly done okay in a tough time for everyone. I lost my cousin to brain cancer in January but he said last year was the best year of his life. If you can live with brain cancer and treat each day as if it’s a great day. We are living in an unknown time and you can either fight it or you can say here we are and go with it. SNL was doing it from that place too. It’s all connected.

AD: The At Home shows were very soothing because you could tell that everyone just wanted to give us something to laugh at.

CS: Yeah. We are used to us going after the Trump administration often, but I love that we were able to show our hearts. That’s important too and I almost love that more.

Saturday Night Live is streaming on NBC’s platforms, including Peacock.