Bowen Yang has voiced support for Aimee Lou Wood after she publicly criticized Saturday Night Live for its portrayal of her in a spoof of The White Lotus last weekend.
“However she reacted to that sketch is completely valid,” Yang recently told Extra. “With parody, you kind of forget the sort of human, emotional cost that it sort of extols on someone.”
The sketch in question, titled “The White POTUS,” took aim at Donald Trump and his allies, starring James Austin Johnson as the president, Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr., Jon Hamm as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Chloe Fineman as Melania Trump. But it was Sarah Sherman‘s depiction of Wood’s White Lotus character, Chelsea, that offended Wood and sparked some backlash.
Sherman appeared in the satire sporting fake, enlarged teeth and speaking in an exaggerated British accent. Hours after the episode, Wood dubbed the portrayal “mean and unfunny.”
Reflecting on Wood’s reaction this past week, Yang described the backlash as a learning opportunity for comedians. “It’s this thing that we tend to forget sometimes, and this is a reminder,” Yang said. “It seems like she’s spoken to people at the show about it, and hopefully there’s room to move on from it.”
He continued, “You need those reminders every now and then that parody can go too far sometimes, and that we as comedians can take [accountability] for that instead of banging our foot and saying, ‘We should be allowed to say whatever we want.'”
Wood was candid about her issues with the sketch in a series of Instagram Stories she posted soon after it aired, writing, “Yes, take the piss for sure — that’s what the show is about — but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
She also shared and responded to several messages from fans about the sketch, of which she said she received “thousands.”
In the days that followed, Wood told fans that she had received “apologies from SNL,” but she did not specify who they were from or what was said. On Wednesday, she shared a photo of a flower bouquet and thanked Sherman for sending it to her.
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During his chat with Extra, Yang also made sure to praise Wood’s performance on season 3 of The White Lotus. “Everyone at SNL is just a fan of the show, obviously a fan of her,” he said. “We just think that she should be so proud of the work that she put into this season.”
Yang is in the midst of a press tour for The Wedding Banquet, Andrew Ahn‘s remake of Ang Lee‘s 1993 cult classic, which follows a group of besties who form a chosen family as they navigate societal expectations and their identities. One scene in the film shows Yang testing how far he would go for comedy by baring it all after an unexpected hookup.
“It was something that for anyone other than Andrew Ahn, I would’ve been like, ‘Let’s talk about coverage,’ and ‘I’m not going to show nip,’ and ‘I’m not going to show butt,'” Yang recently told Entertainment Weekly. “I would’ve gotten really granular about that. But there was just something about playing the comedy of that scene, which is such a shocking moment.”
He added, “You will be able to tell from the flat topography of my buttocks that I bare it all.”
The Wedding Banquet is in theaters now.
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