Molly Shannon Ripped as ‘Pain in the Ass’ by Legendary Director

Molly Shannon has been in the entertainment industry for over three decades and is a beloved actress and comedian, but legendary director Penelope Spheeris thinks otherwise. Known for blockbuster hits such as Wayne’s World, The Little Rascals, The Beverly Hillbillies, and more, Spheeris spent a little bit of her career directing TV, including an episode of the 2004 Fox sitcom Cracking Up, starring Shannon.

Unfortunately, the experience was not up to par for Penelope Spheeris, as it not only actually made her cry, as she said on The Hollywood Reporter‘s It Happened In Hollywood podcast, but she hasn’t directed an episode of television since then. She told senior writer Seth Abramovitch what happened on set and gave the full low-down on why Molly Shannon was a “pain in the ass.”

“There’s only been two actors in my career that ever made me cry. One was Molly Shannon for some jive-ass TV show she was doing… Cracked Up was the name of that TV show, I can’t believe I even remembered it. Cracking Up, yeah,” Spheeris shared. “Molly would not come out of her trailer and having a diva moment, and I was just freaking because I’m trying to make my day in terms of getting all the shots in, and nobody on the crew could get her to come out of that trailer. And then finally, I go and knock on the door, and nobody answers. So I open the door, and I walk in, and I go, ‘Molly, please come to the set.’ And she started screaming at me, ‘Get out of my trailer! Get out of here! Get out of here!’ And I just break down in tears. She was a pain in the ass.”

It’s quite a story, and even despite it happening close to 20 years ago, it sounds like it is still in Penelope Spheeris’ brain after all these years. The Saturday Night Live has yet to speak out about what was said about her, and it’s always possible that the two could bury the hatchet, but since that moment has stuck out for the director after all this time, it’s unlikely she’d be willing to forgive and forget, at least for now.

Molly Shannon is still dominating both film and TV, so there’s a chance a movie that she’s in will be directed by Penelope Spheeris, but it’s hard to tell how that will all go down. Hopefully, at some point, the two will make up, but it doesn’t seem like that will be happening for a while.