Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to episode 176 of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood Reporters Awards

podcast. I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is one of the

funniest people of our time. A 44-year-old actress who first made her name as a

cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live

over seven seasons spanning 2005 through 2012, and who recently received her eighth Emmy nomination

for Best Guest Actress in a comedy series in recognition of her November 19, 2016

return to Studio 8H as a host, The Great Kristen Whig.

Over the course of our conversation at the offices of L.T.L.A. in Los Angeles, Wigg and I discuss a wide

range of topics among them.

Why She Abruptly Dropped out of college where she had been an arts major and relocated from Tucson to Los Angeles

to pursue a career as an actress, how she wound up working with the celebrated improv group

The Groundlings and how several years of that eventually led to auditions for S&L.

What inspired some of her most famous S&L characters, including the Target Lady, Gilly, Penelope, and Aunt Linda,

and why she never watched any episodes of the show while she still was on it.

How she wound up co-writing and playing the lead in the 2011 film Bride's, which became

one of the biggest blockbusters of all time and earned her best original screenplay Oscar nomination and then followed it in the most unexpected of ways, mostly with dark indie dramas.

What it was like for her to return to SNL four years after saying goodbye to it this time as a host plus much more so without further ado let's go to that conversation

Kristen thanks so much for doing this, really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Of course, we always begin with a basic, just where were you born and raised and what

your folks do for a living.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so we're going back.

...