Cecily Strong made one final Weekend Update appearance as recurring character Cathy Anne on Saturday’s episode of “SNL,” but in her fond farewell she intentionally broke character to deliver an emotional sendoff.
“I had a lot of fun here,” she began in her Cathy Anne voice, before morphing into her regular voice as tears filled her eyes. “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.”
That last line was met with wild applause from the audience, after which Strong eased back into character as Cathy Anne.
“But I’m gonna go. I guess take that with a grain of salt being that I have addiction issues.”
Strong’s exit from the series after 11 seasons was announced only an hour before Saturday’s show began.
Before the farewell, Cathy Anne admitted she was “a little emo tonight” saying, “because the truth is, I’m here to say goodbye.”
As it turns out, Cathy Anne said all of her admissions of crimes on Weekend Update had caught up to her and she was going to prison. She then listed some of the aforementioned crimes with quiet asides about doing crack.
“Drug use, trespassing, destruction of property (crack), impersonating a police office (meth and crack), and a sonic attack.”
When Michael Che asked what a sonic attack was, she replied, “I did an upper decker in the soft serve machine at the Sonic.”
Anne said not to worry about her, though, because she’s got “friends on the inside,” after which a picture of former “SNL” cast members Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon in prison gear showed up, to an applause break from the audience.
Anne/Strong even got in a callback to the brief moment of time in which she was selected to co-host Weekend Update with Colin Jost.
Strong ended her final Weekend Update segment by actually lighting her cigarette, in a nod to the fact that in her many previous appearances Cathy Anne is always trying to light her cigarette but never seems to get it to ignite.
“It’s like another great drug addict said: There’s no place like home and there’s no home like the place where I’ve gone to yell outside Michael Che’s window.”
Watch a clip below.
