Cecily Strong

Cecily Strong (born Cecily Legler Strong on 8 February 1984 in Springfield, Illinois) is an American actress and comedian. She was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2012 to 2022, and is the longest-tenured female cast member in the show's history. Raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, she attended the Chicago Academy for the Arts and studied acting at the California Institute of the Arts, graduating in 2006 with a BFA in theatre, before returning to Chicago to study at the Second City Conservatory and iO Chicago.

Strong debuted as a featured player on Saturday Night Live on 15 September 2012, became a repertory player the next season, and co-anchored the recurring Weekend Update segment, first with Seth Meyers and later with Colin Jost. In 2022 she passed former castmate Kate McKinnon as the longest-running female cast member in the show's history, with the 17 December 2022 episode being her last. For her work on the show she was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series at the 72nd and 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards.

She has a starring role on the Apple TV+ musical comedy series Schmigadoon (2021-2023), which she also co-produced, and her other roles include voice work on The Awesomes and supporting roles in films such as Ghostbusters, The Meddler and The Female Brain. She hosted the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2015, and her first book, the memoir This Will All Be Over Soon, was published in 2021. In 2021 she appeared in a Weekend Update sketch as Goober the Clown, which she later confirmed referenced her own abortion.