Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre
Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre has affordable, comedy shows seven nights a week in NYC and LA. Watch the best improv, sketch and standup in the country. Our original comedy video productions have garnered the national spotlight. We also run the first nationally accredited improv and sketch comedy school in the country. For information on our courses, visit the Training Center.
NY Post Calls Kate McKinnon the New Kristen Wiig
Kate McKinnon is the new Kristen WiigAll hail saturday night's new queen of quirky comedy
Live, from New York! It's a blonde, blue-eyed beauty channeling freakishly funny oddballs! Now that Kristen Wiig has hung up her Saturday Night Live wigs, Kate McKinnon may just steal the Studio 8H spotlight when the show returns September 15.
The first openly lesbian cast member in SNL's 37 years, McKinnon gave audiences a preview of her deviant wit and lickety-split timing last season, delivering spot-on impersonations of Bravo's overbearing salon guru Tabatha Coffey and a ridiculously accented Penelope Cruz.
"I've been doing funny voices since I was five," McKinnon told Columbia College Today. "It's always been the way I communicated most comfortably with the rest of the world."
The comic's scene-stealing characters had SNL alum Rachel Dratch giddily tweeting: "Is it true that SNL hired Kate McKinnon as a new cast member? If so, yay! She is a very funny lady."
Like her predecessor, McKinnon got her start on a comedy farm team: Wiig landed at The Groundlings in L.A., while McKinnon polished her satire skills at NYC's Upright Citizens Brigade. She was then snapped up by Logo's The Big Gay Sketch Show while still a senior at Columbia University.
Stephen Guarino, a Big Gay castmate and Happy Endings guest star, says McKinnon is "absolutely the next Kristen Wiig."
"They're both so pretty," he notes. "It's so rare to get a pretty girl that's so goofy."
So buh-bye, Target Lady, Gilly and tiny-handed Judice. Helloooo, Kate!