The Sex Education star, Aimee Lou Wood took to Instagram Stories after the April 12 episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL) aired a parody called “White Potus,” a spoof on HBO’s The White Lotus.
In the five-minute sketch, Wood’s season 3 character, Chelsea, was portrayed by SNL’s Sarah Sherman with exaggerated cartoonish teeth – and Aimee wasn’t laughing.
“I did find the SNL thing mean and unfunny,” she posted on April 13. “Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple weeks ago.” She clarified she’s all for satire, saying, “Yes, take the piss for sure – that’s what the show is about – but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
Since her post, Aimee said she’s gotten “thousands of messages” of support from fans who didn’t vibe with the sketch either. She later added that she received “apologies” from the SNL team, although she didn’t name names.
This moment hits deeper for Wood, who has spoken publicly about the pressure to conform to Hollywood beauty standards – especially regarding her teeth. Back in 2020, she told Stylist she once doubted she’d ever get cast in U.S. shows because of her smile. “People going, ‘Oh my god, you’ve got teeth like mine,’” she recalled fans saying after Sex Education. “Now I go to school and people think I’m cool because I look like Aimee.”
More recently, in a Hollywood Reporter interview, she said rejecting Hollywood’s cookie-cutter standards felt “a bit rebellious.” So it makes sense that a joke reducing her character to a gag about her appearance would sting a bit more.
The White Potus sketch also included Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump, Jon Hamm as RFK Jr., Beck Bennett as Putin, and Chloe Fineman as Melania Trump – but it’s Wood’s character portrayal that sparked the most reaction online.
What do you think – did SNL go too far with the parody or was it just comedy as usual?
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