Jan. 20--"Saturday Night Live" cast member Cecily Strong can trace her comedy roots to a preschool drama class in Oak Park.
"There were only three of us in the class--another little girl and boy. I did not like that little boy. We were supposed to do 'The Frog Prince,' and he was the prince and I was the princess. But I threw a fit because I didn't want to do it with him, and so we wound up doing 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' instead," Strong, 31, told Vanity Fair in an article posted online this week.
"I went from a princess to an elf--and it felt much more comfortable. That's how I should have known I was going to end up in comedy. I cried about being a princess. And I was like, 'Yes! I'm an elf!'"
Strong talked to the magazine about how her Oak Park upbringing and Second City training led to her joining "SNL" in 2012. She said she began to hone her comedic style of delivering lines with a straight face while performing a scene from Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America" for a class at the California Institute of the Arts.
She told Vanity Fair that the more serious she remained, the more people laughed.
She went on to train at Second City, where she was unsure of her talent.
"There was a long time in Chicago when I kept thinking, 'Am I like one of those people on 'American Idol' who doesn't know they're not good?," she recalled.
She also performed on a cruise ship with fellow Second City members for four months, an experience she called "half vacation, half prison."
"I think a lot of people in their twilight years die on cruises. Cruise ships have mortuaries. That was the rumor, anyway. I think we had a couple of people pass away on our ship," Strong said.
"During the show?," the Vanity Fair reporter asked.
"Not during the show," Strong said. "We weren't that funny!"
"SNL" airs on NBC at 10:30 p.m. Mixed martial arts fighter Ronda Rousey is slated to host Saturday with musical guest Selena Gomez.
Strong is slated to appear in Melissa McCarthy's Chicago-set comedy "The Boss" in April and the "Ghostbusters" reboot in July.
