'SNL's' Cecily Strong goes to Washington

Former Oak Park resident Cecily Strong still will be live on Saturday night on April 25, but in a much different atmosphere than usual.

NBC's "Saturday Night Live" is a repeat that evening, so she won't be neglecting her usual job as she becomes the fourth woman to be the featured comedian at the yearly White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington (D.C.) Hilton. Strong will be on the dais with President and Mrs. Obama and members of the press organization during the event, which C-SPAN televises live (with cable news networks also typically showing portions of it as it happens).

Known for such "SNL" characters as one of the "Girlfriends" and the Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With at a Party, Strong got the offer to perform at the dinner through her publicity-executive father Bill, a former chief of The Associated Press bureau at the Illinois Statehouse.

"He sent me a voice-mail message," she recalls, "saying that someone he knew 28 years ago at the AP contacted him, and the way he phrased it was, 'Would you speak at the Correspondents' Dinner?' I thought they were asking him, so I thought there must be a workshop or something and I texted him back, 'Very cool, Dad! You should go!'"

Once that got straightened out, "None of us believed it until we had it officially confirmed a couple of days later," Strong muses. "I was shocked, but I've always shared a passion for politics with my dad, so having this come through him and having him be there for it is a really special thing for us."

Paula Poundstone, Elayne Boosler and Wanda Sykes are the only other female comics to have starred at the event. "It's a great time right now to be a woman in comedy," Strong reasons, "in movies, in TV and everything. I think people are really opening up to female points of view, and it makes it a little easier to know that no matter what I do (at the dinner), it's going to at least start out differently because it'll be from a female voice. I think a lot of people will be excited just for that."

At the same time, Strong knows it "adds a bunch of pressure to do a decent job," and she's been open to tips from those who have had the gig previously ... including one of her former "Weekend Update" co-anchors on "SNL," Seth Meyers. "A lot of people have reached out to me," she says, "which is really incredible. I've been watching a lot of the old ones and any information is helpful, but it can only help me so far. In the end, it's going to be me."

Though Strong's upcoming dinner engagement will be a solo act once she takes the podium, the current 40th-anniversary season of "SNL" has been the group effort the show always is. "Every week is a monumental week of not sleeping and working fast and hard, and it's all exciting," she says of nearing the end of her third season on the program. "Until it's over, it doesn't feel like it's almost over."