Lifestyle
Kate McKinnon's new middle-grade mystery is for all her fellow misfits
Emmy Award winning SNL star and Weird Barbie Kate McKinnon can now add novelist to her resume.
Her first book, The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette For Young Ladies of Mad Science, is a middle-grade mystery full of oddball characters, creatures and contraptions.
The novel, which hit shelves Tuesday, is part of what she calls her “private mission to give a wink and a nod” to young people who might feel “different,” like as she did, growing up.
McKinnon, whose characters and impressions on SNL are legendary, fully admits she was a “weird” kid. She wore a Peter Pan costume to school every day for a year. Later, she dressed like Pippi Longstocking. “I would go to school in these outfits because I felt more confident … and somehow more myself. Go figure,” she told NPR.
As a kid, McKinnon shared her room with an array of pets including Madagascar hissing cockroaches and an iguana named Willy. “It’s not something I would do again. And I don’t recommend it for anyone,” advised McKinnon. “That said, oh my gosh, we had fun me and that iguana. And by ‘fun’ I mean we had a contentious relationship that felt like a bad marriage that we’d entered into because one of us was pregnant.” McKinnon says eventually her mom, a social worker, sent the iguana to a reptile rescue organization in Boca.
Even though her parents fully supported her eccentricities, McKinnon said she often felt like an outcast among her peers: “I just felt very wrong. Like, I was not good enough and was wrong.”
Then she found her people. “In fourth grade we started a Honeysuckle Eaters Club on the playground. So we would go into a corner while all the cool girls were watching the guys play basketball. We would go and eat honeysuckle and try to understand the correlation between flower color and sweetness of nectar. And we made notes,” McKinnon laughed. “So that’s what I had cookin,’ and luckily, I was not alone.”
Small wonder one of her favorite authors was Roald Dahl; she especially like his book The Witches, in which the title characters turn children into mice.
“I love a delicious villain. And who’s more delicious than the Grand High Witch,” McKinnon declared. “But I loved also that it started with a set of instructions about how to identify real witches. And I was so taken by that because I thought, ‘I know it’s fantasy, but like, he’s talking to me.’”
In similar fashion, McKinnon breaks the fourth wall throughout Millicent Quibb, telling readers they can “take a short break” and that she’s going to hand the story “over to the illustrator… and go watch TV.”
The Porch sisters are the stars of Kate McKinnon’s new novel.
Little Brown
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Little Brown
The novel, the first in a series, begins with a warning:
“The situations contained in these books could cause:
Instant death
Extremely instant death (bad)
Semi-instant death (worse)
Burning in the upper extremities
Burning in the lower extremities
Permanent intestinal parasites”
And so on.
McKinnon narrates the audiobook with help from her sister, comedian Emily Lynne.
Comedian and author Kate McKinnon.
Jackie Abbott/Little Brown
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Jackie Abbott/Little Brown
Set in 1911 in the fictional town of Antiquarium, tween sisters Gertrude, Eugenia and Dee-Dee Porch have passions that include slugs, bats, rocks, explosions and building machines. Suffice it to say they do not belong in snooty Antiquarium where girls attend etiquette school and the official dog is the bichon frisé. They’re teased by classmates and shamed by their teacher.
Enter Millicent Quibb, the ostracized, disorganized, well-meaning mad scientist who trains the Porch sisters to help her save the town from the dangers lurking underground.
Quibb’s hair is described as “a chaotic nest of salty, windswept fibers that were thick as sea rope.” She wears a lab coat “splattered with stains of all colors and textures-a neon green smear, a dribble of oatmeal, a matrix of dried intestines.”
Despite rewriting the first chapter “like 500 times,” McKinnon said she loved “writing about these three little weirdos and their Willy Wonka-esque mentor in this stuffy turn of the century town.”
It took her more than 10 years to write Millicent Quibb. She got the idea before joining SNL in 2012. At the time she was doing sketch comedy for free in the basement of a New York supermarket with the Upright Citizens Brigade.
“Sketch comedy and middle grade literature have a lot in common, namely funny names and big hair,” McKinnon said, “And so it just felt for me like a way to perform when I didn’t have to be at a show at the basement that night.”
McKinnon said she hopes her oddball heroes make her fellow misfits feel less alone. She’s a big believer that weirdness can be its own kind of superpower, “That thing that makes you weird. That’s actually the thing that you can use to save the town, save the world, save yourselves. That’s a message that I find true.”
Lifestyle
This spring, have a tea ceremony inside of an art installation and shop the latest Givenchy
Givenchy by Sarah Burton introduces the Snatch
Givenchy’s “The Snatch” handbag.
(Marc Piasecki / Getty Images)
Echoing the designer’s ready-to-wear sculptural designs, the Snatch from Givenchy by Sarah Burton is sensually shaped by the contours of the person who carries it. Its supple leather, fluid silhouette and three sizes allow it to slip effortlessly and intimately into the hand, over the shoulder or across the body. Now available. givenchy.com
Guess Jeans opens new L.A. store
Guess Jeans store interior.
(Josh Cho)
In a move familiar to many millennials these days, Guess Jeans has returned home in its 45th year. The new flagship store in West Hollywood is both a return to its California roots and an envisioning of its future still ahead. While the brand may be an established icon, the store boldly reimagines the retail space as a living laboratory for design, craftsmanship and collaboration, with dedicated workshop and customization spaces. 8700 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. guess.com
Louis Vuitton’s new Color Blossom collection
Louis Vuitton’s new Color Blossom collection highlights sodalite.
(Louis Vuitton)
Taylor Swift’s sky may be opalite, but the starry blue hues in the new jewels of Louis Vuitton’s Color Blossom collection belong to sodalite. Rarely used in jewelry, the dark navy of sodalite adds an unexpected layer of depth to Color Blossom’s existing luminous gemstone lineup. Sun and star motifs rendered in gold enhance the gem’s night sky coloring, while the classic flower designs celebrate the 130th anniversary of the Louis Vuitton Monogram. Sodalite pieces available March 6, entire collection available April 4. louisvuitton.com
Loro Piana debuts Library of Knits
Loro Piana’s Library of Knits comes in over 20 shades.
(Lora Piana)
L.A.’s (many) winter showers bring spring wildflowers, and a bouquet of Loro Piana’s new Library of Knits fits right into the vibrant spectacle. The exquisitely soft cashmere pieces in classic styles now come in over 20 shades inspired by Sergio Loro Piana’s personal wardrobe. With a spectrum ranging from blues and greens to corals and creams, it’s hard to choose just one for a frolic in the fields. Now available. loropiana.com
Margesherwood X Peanuts
The Margesherwood X Peanuts collaboration features instantly recognizable motifs.
(Marge Sherwood)
Love is famously in the air this time of year, apparently even for cartoon characters. This enduring love is illustrated (literally) in the Margesherwood X Peanuts collaboration. Inspired by the heart-fluttering love letters Sally writes to Linus, the designs feature instantly recognizable motifs that marry the Peanuts’ charm with Margesherwood’s refined silhouettes. The zig-zag of that famous yellow shirt winkingly graces a crescent baguette, while the black stripes of Linus’s red red shirt wrap around a slouchy shoulder bag. For the true heads and lovers, there’s even a petite hobo emblazoned with Sally’s pet name for Linus: “FOR MY SWEET BABBOO.” Now available. margesherwood.com
Ryan Preciado at Hollyhock House
Ryan Preciado’s site-responsive “Diary of a Fly” at Hollyhock House features Oaxacan-woven textiles.
(Roman Koval)
Ryan Preciado’s new site-responsive installation at Hollyhock House, “Diary of a Fly,” is titled after a late-1930s musical composition by Béla Bartók that imitates the frenzied pace of a fly — a fitting name since his show reconceptualizes the experience of the springtime pest flitting around a house. Instead of hovering around overripe fruit or stalking a trash can long neglected, however, viewers are invited to take in Preciado’s Oaxacan-woven textiles and brightly colored sculptures situated throughout the city’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site. Open through April 25. 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. hollyhockhouse.org
Veronica Fernandez at Anat Ebgi
Veronica Fernanadez’s “Prey” filters childhood memories through experience and emotion.
(Veronica Fernandez)
In the figurative paintings of Veronica Fernandez’s first solo exhibition, “Prey,” the artist’s childhood is recalled through dreamlike and fantastical scenes, with memories filtered through experience and emotion. Many of her works place a child at the center of the scene among family, friends and caretakers, who usually appear shadow-like at the edges of the paintings. As a kid, Fernandez endured periods of homelessness. But rather than depict a childhood of adversity, her paintings empower the kids within them to claim their own space, imbuing her memories with strength and light. Open through April 4. 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. anatebgi.com
Dior launches J’Adore Intense
Dior’s J’Adore Intense captures the scent of solar flowers with Rihanna as its muse.
(J’Adore)
Florals for spring can be groundbreaking, especially when they’re created with none other than Rihanna as their muse. Dior’s J’Adore Intense captures the scent of solar flowers — jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose, violet — right before they burst into fruit. The result is a warm, bold, addictive fragrance that drips with sensuality and femininity, down to the curves of its signature gold and glass figure-eight amphora. In other words, it’s Rihanna in a bottle. Available now. dior.com
Rocky’s Matcha X Oscar Tuazon at Morán Morán
Rocky’s Matcha hosts Japanese tea ceremonies in an ensō-inspired tea house from Oscar Tuazon at Morán Morán.
(Stade New York)
The single, uninhibited brushstroke of the ensō, the circular form in Zen art, serves as a record of a moment. Commissioned by Rocky’s Matcha, Oscar Tuazon’s “Circle House” at Morán Morán shares both the ensō’s form and its call to mindfulness. In the artist’s tea house, constructed from cardboard, wood and tatami mats, architecture is inseparable from ritual: visitors will soon be able to partake in a Japanese tea ceremony inside the installation, thereby participating in a choreography of attention not unlike the act of gliding an ink brush across a sheet of washi. Open through December 31. 641 N. Western Ave. Los Angeles. Subscribe to rocky’s newsletter for tea ceremony information. rockysmatcha.com and moranmorangallery.com
Celebrate Mr. Wash’s new book, “Artists in Space”
Celebrate the launch of Mr. Wash’s new book of studio visits and interviews with other L.A. artists.
(Mr Wash)
Make your first BBQ of the season a meaningful one at the Art By Wash Studio & Community Center, where Compton artist and criminal justice advocate, Mr. Wash, will celebrate the release of his book “Artists in Space.” Proceeds from the book, which features interviews and studio visits with 20 Angeleno residents, go toward establishing the new community center where individuals returning home from incarceration will have access to art classes, creative residencies and housing. Mr. Wash will be in conversation with Patrisse Culllors and Evan Pricco (co-publisher and founder of the Unibrow) as well as displaying new works. The event is on March 7 from 2-6 p.m. 15 W. Rosecrans Ave., Compton. artbywash.com
Lifestyle
‘Hamnet’ star Jessie Buckley looks for the ‘shadowy bits’ of her characters
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
Kate Green/Getty Images
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.

But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.

“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …

The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
‘Evil Dead’ Star Bruce Campbell Reveals He Has Cancer
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
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