A Saturday Night Live star has spoken out after Aimee Lou Wood was upset when the show parodied her.
On the April 12 episode of SNL, cast member Sarah Sherman portrayed a version of Chelsea, the character Wood played in season three of HBO’s The White Lotus.
The sketch, titled 'The White Potus,' mashed up The White Lotus with U.S. politics, featuring James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump, Chloe Fineman as Melania Trump, Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr., and Jon Hamm as a Walton Goggins-style Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Hamm’s RFK Jr., dressed like Chelsea’s on-screen boyfriend Rick, delivered a wild line: “I’ve been having these insane ideas, like what if we took all the fluoride out of the drinking water? What would that do to people’s teeth?”
Cue Sherman’s Chelsea - sporting exaggerated prosthetic teeth - chiming in with: “Fluoride? What’s that?”
That was the moment Wood hit her limit.
Taking to social media, Wood wrote: “Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple of weeks ago. Yes, take the p**s for sure – that’s what the show is about – but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
She continued: “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.”
While she clarified she wasn’t “thin-skinned” and typically enjoys jokes “when they’re clever and in good spirits,” this one crossed a line.
“The joke was about fluoride. I have big gap teeth, not bad teeth,” she wrote, adding: “It’s not [Sherman’s] fault… not hating on her. Just hating on the concept.”
Wood revealed she received a rare apology from SNL, but not before things got more confusing. She shared what appeared to be an apology from Sherman, posted by a spoof account (@sarahsquirm_5), not Sherman’s real handle (@sarahsquirm).
The fake message said: “The use of prosthetic teeth and the exaggerated accent weren’t meant as personal attacks, but I get why it felt that way.”
Wood posted it, only to later realize the account was fake - and swiftly deleted it.
Despite the chaos, the story took a softer turn. On Tuesday, Sherman sent Wood a bouquet of flowers as a peace offering.
Wood posted a photo of the colorful arrangement on her Instagram Stories with the caption: “Thank you for the beautiful flowers,” tagging Sherman’s real account.
Bowen Yang, another SNL cast member, backed Wood’s reaction in an interview with Extra.
“With parody, you kind of forget the sort of human, emotional cost that it sort of extols on someone,” Yang said. “Everyone at SNL is just a fan of the show, obviously a fan of her… it’s this thing that we tend to forget sometimes, and this is a reminder.”
He continued: “Parody can go too far sometimes… We, as comedians, can take account for that instead of banging our foot and saying that we should be able to say whatever we want. That’s just culture, it’s not PC or woke culture, it’s just culture.”
Not long after the sketch aired, photos surfaced showing Wood crying on the streets of South London, reportedly upset over the parody. But she quickly cleared that up.
“Just to say, I actually wasn’t crying about anything that the papers made out I was crying about [...] Something completely unrelated,” she wrote, responding to a fan’s message of support.
Wood was seen being comforted by House of the Dragon actor Ralph Davis during the moment.