Molly Shannon and Ken Marino Laugh and Cry About Fame, Family, and ‘The Other Two’

The Other Two may be the funniest show on TV right now. So why do we keep crying while watching it?

Season 3 of the Max series continues to follow siblings Brooke (Heléne Yorke) and Cary (Drew Tarver), who weather incessant exasperation when the professional success and personal fulfillment they feel they deserve keeps eluding them—all while navigating the tension between their deep love for their family (Case Walker’s Chase Dreams and Molly Shannon’s Pat) and their jealousy of their respective good fortunes.

(Warning: Some spoilers for Season 3 of The Other Two.)

Especially in the most recent episode, “Cary & Brooke Go to an AIDS Play,” The Other Two has been a master work of emotional extremes.

The ballsy, brutally accurate skewering of the show-business obsession with gay trauma is sent up with shocking laughs, while a cynical PR orchestration of a celebrity relationship—complete with a cameo from Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka—is a chef’s kiss-worthy addition to the comedic meal. The episode also happened to feature the realest relationship fight I’ve seen on TV in a long time—apologies to Succession’s Shiv and Tom—and a final note about how familial relationships you never thought mattered end up being profoundly important.

At the center of that balancing act between the show’s outrageous humor and surprisingly grounded themes are Molly Shannon and Ken Marino, The Other Two’s most unlikely and perhaps strangest couple who have in turn become its healthiest—even if that means understanding that the healthiest decision is to be apart.

Shannon’s Pat and Marino’s Streeter, at first glance, are emblematic of The Other Two’s wanton lunacy, characters at the center of the show’s most delightfully strange plot arcs. Pat, Brooke and Cary’s mother, was an earnest, naive stage mom, tickled by her son Chase’s breakout success as a YouTube star, and oblivious of what that would mean for their lives. Streeter was Chase’s manager, desperate for validation from Pat and Chase’s family, and humiliatingly devoted to the career of a pubescent celebrity.

Over the course of the series, Pat accidentally became a media mogul—first, hosting a wildly popular talk show, and, now, running her own network. She’s so wildly famous that she is forced to don prosthetics and drug her security detail so she can sneak out of her mansion to go to brunch with her kids without being mobbed by fans. Streeter has successfully guided Chase to superstardom, happily swallowing each indignity that entails—including, this season, driving a photo of Chase’s armpit across the country for a magazine cover that will herald his 18th birthday and ensuing sexualization.

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Along the way Pat and Streeter became a committed couple, to the mortification of Cary and Brooke. The pair survived the COVID years together, emerging as poignant voices of reason for the Dubek kids, as well as, when they make the decision to break up in the most recent episode, for themselves.

The Daily Beast’s Obsessed talked with Shannon and Marino about the origins of TV’s wackiest couple, how two outrageous characters have managed to also be the show’s most human, and their own experience bushwhacking through the jungle of extreme celebrity that The Other Two lampoons. Like their characters on the show, they are hilarious together—and then, too, astute and surprisingly moving.

Watching this season, I’ve been struck how remarkably healthy the relationship between your two characters seems to be, in ways that I never would have expected, given how outrageous their pairing seemed when it began. How did you settle into that dynamic?

Shannon: I think that this is a really big relationship for Pat. Her husband was an alcoholic, so this is a big chapter two for her. He died on the roof, having drank too much. She really loves Streeter. I think they have the same values about family, and she knows what a good person he is. It’s really her first big relationship in her life!

They truly love one another, and it’s so easy to play that with Ken, because I feel that way about him in real life. I just adore him. He’s a brilliant actor and so funny. Kevin, he makes me laugh harder than anybody. It’s easy because I love him so much in real life.

Marino: Well, the feeling is mutual. I think one of the reasons that it’s easy to play the love that Streeter has for Pat is because my love for Molly is so large. But I think the reason they’re in a healthier place, although there are issues, is that Pat set some boundaries and Streeter abided. He heard them and adjusted. In my head, after COVID hit and in those three years, they learned to spend time with each other, but also give each other space.

Shannon: Kevin, this is kind of a funny thing. It wasn’t originally that way when we shot the pilot.

Oh really? Their relationship wasn’t?

Shannon: I think it was the pilot, or maybe it was a little later in the first season. There was a scene where we all met, and it’s where Ken has this big monologue about how he loves Chase Dreams. Our characters weren’t together as a couple yet, but my character was so delighted with him at that dinner. She just thought he was the most charming. [Creators] Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, I think, saw our real chemistry in real life and how much our characters clicked, and they decided they would write [the relationship] based on that scene.

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It’s wild to see Pat have everything you would think a person could want, and how much of a prison that is for her. What was it like to put on the prosthetics that she has to use to go out in the real world?

Shannon: It was crazy. I walked around at lunch in Brooklyn with the prosthetics on. I was like, “This is so fun.” I was really hoping that I would bump into somebody I know. Or trick somebody and say, “Come and meet me for lunch,” and not let them know that I’m in disguise. But it was the weirdest. It’s like one of those acting things, where I walked around at lunch in Brooklyn, and I went and ordered a sandwich. The butchers were kind of rude to me. I was like, “Oh, this is such an interesting thing.” Normally people are really polite and sweet to me, and they were kind of rude.

That’s so sad, but also kind of illuminating.

Shannon: I saw Ken outside by the trailers, and I was like, “Ken!” I forgot I had the prosthetics on, and he kind of ignored me. I was like, “Oh, maybe he’s distracted or something today.” Ken, tell the story. It’s so funny.

Marino: There was a woman hanging around, smiling at me from like five-to-10 feet away, waving. I’m like, “Hi, how are you?” And then I went on with my day. Then they called me to the set. I’m walking to the set and there’s a woman who’s like 10 feet away from me, just following me and waving. I’m like, “Hi, yes. Hi, how are you?” At no point did I know it was Molly. Then we shot that scene at the bar, and this woman is there sitting at the bar. She says her lines and I hear Molly’s voice, and I just lost it. Because I honestly thought it was just some crazy person following me, and I didn’t know what to do. It was Molly in prosthetics.

Shannon: We were laughing so hard. Oh my god.

Marino: I find Molly’s story arc interesting, because she’s trapped in this mansion. It’s like, money can’t buy you happiness, if you have nobody to share it with. She doesn’t have time for the thing that brings her joy, and that’s her family. I thought that that was such an interesting arc for her character.

Shannon: I remember, Kevin, when I was first on SNL, I met Drew Barrymore for lunch, because we’d done Never Been Kissed together. We went out for lunch somewhere in New York City, near the White Horse Tavern. I was like, “Oh, do you want to sit outside?” She was like, “Actually, I might get hassled. Can we sit inside?” It was before I even understood that [level of fame]. But I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s right. Because you’re Drew Barrymore!”

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Yeah, that makes total sense!

Shannon: You would go out with her at night, and just so many people come up to her. I remember, she would get kind of tired of it. People would be like, “Are you Drew Barrymore?” And she just would start to say no, and then they’d look at her face really closely: “You sure look like Drew Barrymore.” And their faces would be like this close to her [puts her hand to her nose], and she would go, “No.”

It’s such an interesting parallel to what’s happening on the show. There’s Cary, who is striving so hard for success and that fame. Then there’s Pat, who knows that achieving that isn’t always wonderful, as that Drew Barrymore story proves. Have you experienced that in your own lives: that push and pull of striving for the thing that you thought that you wanted, and then maybe once you get there, it’s not what you thought it would be like?

Marino: It’s taken me a long time to learn that fame, success, or the monetary things will not bring you happiness, if you’re not at peace with yourself and who you are. If you’re not happy with you, just in a bubble, without any of that stuff. I try to appreciate that and live by that definition of what happiness is, because that’s, for me, the only way to be at peace and find true joy.

Shannon: I felt that way too. I talked about this in my memoir. I thought that when I got super famous, everything was going to be fine. But I remember falling into the worst kind of depression when I was at the peak of Saturday Night Live. I was like, “Oh, it doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t bring my mother back.” Then it was kind of a relief, because I felt like, “Well, now I can just enjoy being on Saturday Night Live and working on being creative, living a creative life. And it doesn't matter if you’re number one, if you could just enjoy where you are.”

That must have been such a relief to realize.

Shannon: Me, Molly, I don’t believe that there’s some perfect life that somebody is living. I think that’s a fantasy. I think if you just embrace your own life and the people you have—and you only need a few people who you're close to one or two really close people—you can feel so fulfilled. I was raised that way by my dad. He always felt that if you just sit in a coffee shop talking to somebody, that’s happiness: connecting. You don’t have to have all this stuff. I was raised with good values, so I think I’ve been able to carry that with me through showbusiness.

Marino: Just family. Molly has a beautiful family. We talked about our children all the time. That’s where the joy is, and that’s the part of The Other Two that is so relatable to me and I would think to Molly, which is that it always comes back to family and the kids.

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Shannon: I don’t want to say who this is, but early on at SNL, I went to somebody very famous’ house in Malibu. It was, like, chefs and staff, and it was so lonely. I was like, “Oh, god, this is so sad.” It was the most beautiful white house, everything perfect—things you would dream about. And the people there did not seem happy. It just shows that sometimes you see people with all the money in the world, but then that’s not enough, because they want power. It seems like it could never stop. I just thought, I don’t ever want to live that way. I feel like I can find happiness just in small ways. I do try to always focus on that, and remember that, and get back to that.

Marino: Other than Oprah, most people with a lot of money are just jerks.

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