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The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has revealed she received an apology from Saturday Night Live following backlash over a sketch that mocked her appearance and character in a way she called “mean and unfunny.”
The controversy erupted after the latest episode of SNL aired a parody skit featuring comedian Sarah Sherman as a highly exaggerated version of Wood’s White Lotus character, Chelsea. In the sketch, Jon Hamm portrayed a parody of Walton Goggins’ character Rick, dressed in the show’s signature Hawaiian resort attire, and delivered a bizarre 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?”
The camera then cut to Sherman’s caricature of Chelsea, sporting oversized fake teeth, who responded cluelessly, “Fluoride? What’s that?” The moment instantly raised eyebrows for its apparent focus on Wood’s real-life appearance, rather than any broader satire.
Aimee Lou Wood took to her Instagram Stories the following day to express her disappointment. “Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple of weeks ago,” she wrote. “Yes, take the p*** for sure, that’s what the show is about, but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
The actress later shared a follow-up post revealing that SNL had reached out to apologise. “I’ve had apologies from SNL,” she wrote, calling it the “last thing I’ll say on the matter.”
Clarifying her reaction further, Wood explained: “I am not thin-skinned. I actually love being taken the p*** out of when it’s clever and in good spirits. But the joke was about fluoride. I have big gap teeth, not bad teeth. 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 was also quick to defend SNL cast member Sarah Sherman, distancing her from the controversy: “Actually one last thing. Not Sarah Sherman’s fault. Not hating on her, hating on the concept.”
Apologies from SNL are extremely rare, especially in response to celebrity criticism, suggesting that Wood’s reaction struck a chord behind the scenes at the long-running sketch show. While satire is a cornerstone of the programme’s identity, this incident has reignited the conversation around where the line between comedy and cruelty lies, especially when real people and their physical traits are the punchline.
