Wood says she’s glad she spoke up about the “mean and unfunny” impression, even if it caused “chaos”
Aimee Lou Wood has no regrets about calling out Saturday Night Live for the way they portrayed her White Lotus character. Back in April, the actor slammed Sarah Sherman’s impression as “mean and unfunny.” Now, in a new BBC News interview, Wood says she stands by every word.
“I don’t regret saying it because it was breaking a pattern, which is what I would usually do — what I did when I was younger and got bullied,” Wood told the outlet. “No matter what chaos came from it, I’m still happy for me and my personal journey that I said something.”
In the sketch, Sherman played Wood’s The White Lotus character Chelsea, donning oversized fake teeth and mocking her Manchester accent with a line dumbing her character down more in a conversation about removing fluoride from water and eating monkeys.
Wood explained that speaking out on her feelings about the sketch was about resisting the instinct to shrink herself. “I have a choice here to go in and be embarrassed about it and just say, ‘I didn’t like that. It was mean,’” she said. “I’ve gone into meetings with directors that I’ve admired and burst into tears and not been able to say a word. The urge is always to correct, to say, ‘I’m so sorry I just did something messy,’ when actually you didn’t do anything wrong.”
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A month after Wood’s comments, Sherman admitted the bit missed the mark. “I was excited to play her because she’s so iconic, her character is so iconic,” Sherman told Vanity Fair. “And I fucking obviously never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. Never in a million years did I get into comedy to make anyone upset. I feel terrible that anyone would feel bad.”
Sherman sent Wood flowers at the time, and Wood said she also received an apology from SNL. Still, she found the joke cheap. “I don’t mind caricature — I understand that’s what SNL is. But the rest of the skit was punching up and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on,” she said at the time.