Tonight, the Golden Globes honored Ellen DeGeneres with the Carol Burnett Award for Achievement in Television. Kate McKinnon presented the award to her with a heartfelt—and at times, hilarious—speech. The SNL star, of course, has famously imitated DeGeneres for years and has often appeared on her talk show. While she joked about items of clothing she’s gotten from DeGeneres (some Stan Smiths and her best button-down shirts), McKinnon opened up about how much DeGeneres’ coming out meant to her as a young gay woman.
“In 1997, when Ellen’s sitcom was at the height of its popularity, I was in my mother’s basement lifting weights in front of the mirror and thinking, ‘Am I gay?’” said McKinnon, adding, “And I was and I still am. But that’s a very scary thing to suddenly know about yourself, it’s sort of like doing 23AndMe and discovering that you have alien DNA.”
But watching that historic moment on Ellen changed everything.
“The only thing that made it less scary was seeing Ellen on TV,” McKinnon continued. “She risked her entire life and her entire career in order to tell the truth and she suffered greatly for it. Of course, attitudes change but only because brave people like Ellen jump into the fire to make them change. And if I hadn’t seen her on TV, I would’ve thought, ‘I can never be on TV, they don’t let LGBTQ people on TV,’ and more than that, I would’ve gone on thinking that I was an alien and that I maybe didn’t even have a right to be here, so thank you, Ellen, for giving me a shot.”
You can watch the speech in full, below:
Viewers got emotional watching McKinnon, too.
After DeGeneres accepted the award, she went backstage where she was asked whom she looks up to, reports Entertainment Weekly. Her response? Kate McKinnon, naturally. “I look up to—not just people that are older than me but people that are starting out now and paving the way,” DeGeneres said. “I think Kate McKinnon is brilliant, and I think she’s strong, and I think she’s brave, so I look up to her.”
