Aimee Lou Wood Doesn’t Regret Criticizing SNL’s ‘White Lotus’ Parody

Aimee Lou Wood doesn’t regret criticizing Saturday Night Live over their parody of her character on The White Lotus.

In April, the sketch comedy series aired a spoof entitled The White POTUS, which was a pretaped sketch that saw characters from season three of the hit HBO series swapped out with President Donald Trump, his family and members of his cabinet. In the bit, Sarah Sherman portrayed Wood’s role of Chelsea from the show, wearing a dramatized pair of fake teeth and said, “Fluoride, what’s that? Oh look, a monkey!”

Wood went on to share on her social media that she found “the SNL thing mean and unfunny,” which led to an apology from the show and Sherman to send her flowers. Now, looking back on the controversy in an interview with BBC News, the Emmy-nominated actress said she doesn’t regret calling out the show for the sketch.

“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 said. “No matter what chaos came from it, I’m still happy for me and my personal journey that I said something.”

“I have a choice here to go in and be embarrassed about it and just say ‘I didn’t like that. It was mean,’” Wood said of what she thought after seeing the sketch. “I’ve gone into meetings with directors that I’ve admired and burst into tears and not been able to say a word and I think that kind of urge is always to correct, to say ‘I’m so sorry that I just did something messy’ and actually you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Reflecting on backlash related to her parodying Wood, Sherman said she “obviously never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings.” 

“Never in a million years did I get into comedy to make anyone upset,” she said of Wood’s reaction to the bit. “I feel terrible that anyone would feel bad.”