SNL’s Cecily Strong Says Goodbye Through Tears: ‘It’s Just My Time Now’
Fans of Saturday Night Live were more than a little surprised when Cecily Strong, one of the sketch-comedy show’s strongest players, returned for its 48th season this October.
SNL had just experienced a wave of high-profile departures—Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, Kyle Mooney, Alex Moffat, Chris Redd, Melissa Villaseñor and Aristotle Athari—prior to the start of the season, and Strong herself had not only taken the first few weeks of it off due to her one-woman show, but also her Apple TV+ series Schmigadoon! had been picked up for a second season thanks to strong reviews.
After a cold open featuring Strong’s Kimberly Guilfoyle hijacking an infomercial of Trump (James Austin Johnson) selling his gullible fans NFTs by pushing her own ear-splitting Christmas album, the 11-year veteran got a proper send-off during “Weekend Update.”
Appearing as “two-time Heisman Trophy stealer Cathy Anne,” one of Strong’s longest-running bits, the comedienne entered in a pink track jacket and a Santa hat, struggling to light a cigarette.
“It’s covering a giant open wound,” she said of the Santa hat. “I got a little bit scalped… I fell asleep on an escalator. It is just a mess up here. But at least now, the curtains match the drapes!”
“You know, actually, I’m a little emo tonight because, truth is, I’m here to say goodbye,” she added.
When “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che asked her where she was going, Strong’s Cathy Anne exclaimed, “Turns out: prison! All the crimes I confessed to you here for the past seven years finally caught up with me. You know, drug use, trespassing, destruction of property, crack, impersonating a police officer, and some crack… and doing a couple of Sonic attacks.” (By that, she meant “doing an upper-decker in a Sonic.”)
“I think it’s actually gonna give me some much-needed stability. And I’m not so scared cause I’ve got friends on the inside, and they seem to be doing OK,” she explained, throwing to a photo of Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant in prison, covered in tattoos.
Then, tearing up, Strong (as Cathy Anne) broke character a bit, saying, “It’s just my time now. But I had a lot of fun here, and I feel really lucky that I got to have so many of the best moments of my life in this place, with these people that I love so much.”