Death is complicated, says Molly Shannon, who finds its nuances in ‘Other People’
Mike White is the friendship that keeps giving for Molly Shannon. The longtime friends first collaborated on White’s 2007 dramedy “Year of the Dog,” and later she earned an Emmy nomination for her work on an episode of his lauded HBO TV series “Enlightened.” Those two performances are one reason Chris Kelly offered Shannon a key role in his moving drama “Other People,” and she’s earned significant critical acclaim since the picture premiered at Sundance in January. Moreover, it turns out he’s not the only filmmaker who’s taken notice of the former “Saturday Night Live” star’s acting chops.
“Chris loves Mike White, and so many of these directors where I’ve done more dramatic work in their movies, they have all written me quoting Mike in their letters,” Shannon says. “I’m really so grateful because sometimes it’s not easy to break out when people only know you for one thing and they only want to see you in that one thing. And they just see you as a broad comedian and don’t know you can do other stuff.”
Inspired by Kelly’s own experiences, “Other People” finds Shannon playing Joanne, a mother battling cancer while her son, David (Jesse Plemmons), moves back home to help take care of her and reevaluate his career path as a comedy writer (Kelly is the co-head writer on “Saturday Night Live”).
While the film is semi-autobiographical, it was always clear to Shannon that they were not there to make a docudrama. Finding Joanne’s essence was what mattered to Kelly, and Shannon says he wanted an actor with a comedy background to help give the picture levity “so it wasn’t just this heavy thing.”
“It’s kind of showing how complicated it is,” Shannon says of facing down imminent death. “Sometimes it’s really sad and sometimes the characters go through all these different feelings. It’s just not all so grim. It’s all over the place and the feelings she had were complicated. Sometimes she’s angry. Sometimes she’s sad. Sometimes she’s just like, ‘Ah … it. I’m dying.’ ‘The cancer is back!’ What is she gonna do? Her life is being cut short.”
Plemmons and Shannon form a remarkable bond in the picture and are arguably at their best in a scene toward the end of the movie when Joanne tells her son she’s decided to stop her chemo treatments. Shannon recalls that it was one of those moments they were definitely worried about pulling off beforehand.
“It was very intimate and it was a two-shot,” Shannon says. “I’m so weakened and I’m like whispering. Chris was like, ‘I think this is good with you leaning on him.’ So Chris kind of set that up. I think we just did it a couple of times because it’s such a hard scene. It was a very soft, quiet scene. I have never done a scene like that in my whole life, in my whole acting career. I’ve never done anything like that ever.”
I think a lot of comedians are from darker places and you can sort of pull from that stuff.
— Molly Shannon
Despite the comedic pigeonholing, dramatic work has never really been a serious jump for Shannon. She studied acting at NYU and only got into comedy when she moved to Los Angeles and took an improv class at Second City. She laughs that infectious familiar laugh, remembering, “A friend of mine was like, ‘Comedy is king. Comedy is the way you break in.’ And I was like, ‘Is it? Comedy is king?’ And I thought maybe this would be a great way to break in, but I was a regular dramatic actress [before all that].”
Shannon, who can be seen alongside Sarah Jessica Parker in another HBO series, “Divorce,” has a unique perspective on the differences between comedic and straight dramatic work. She notes that comedy is very technical and also very musical, it has “like a rhythm. Comedians are usually really good at music because it has a certain funk and beat.” With drama, on the other hand, you have to be vulnerable and in the moment.
“When I was at NYU, I remember I did a comedy show there and someone said, ‘You should be on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ It came naturally to me,” Shannon says. “I think a lot of comedians are from darker places and you can sort of pull from that stuff. I love doing both.”
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