Bowen Yang says Aimee Lou Wood’s reaction to ‘SNL’ sketch was “completely valid”: “With parody, you kind of forget the human, emotional cost”

20 April, 2025

Bowen Yang and Aimee Lou Wood

Saturday Night Live comedian Bowen Yang has voiced his support for Aimee Lou Wood, after The White Lotus star hit out at the show’s “mean and unfunny” parody of her.

On last week’s (April 12) episode of SNL, a spoof sketch aired that saw Sarah Sherman play a version of Wood’s White Lotus character Chelsea, revolving around a scenario that included James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump, Chloe Fineman’s Melania Trump, Mikey Day’s Donald Trump Jr. And Jon Hamm’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Hamm’s RFK was dressed as Walton Goggins’ Rick from The White Lotus – Chelsea’s boyfriend in the show – and said: “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 cut to Sherman’s Chelsea, who was sporting exaggerated false teeth. She replied: “Fluoride? What’s that?”, prompting Wood to describe the sketch as “mean and unfunny”.

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 piss for sure – that’s what the show is about – but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”

The actor had already confirmed that she had received a rare apology from the show, and has since shared with fans that Sherman personally sent her a bouquet of flowers.

The Sex Education star later said she was “not thin-skinned”, and enjoyed jokes when they were “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.”

Now, Yang has told Extra her response was “completely valid”, saying: “With parody, you kind of forget the sort of human, emotional cost that it sort of extols on someone.”

“Everyone at SNL is just a fan of the show, obviously a fan of her,” he continued. “We just think that she should be so proud of the work that she put into the season, it was just water-cooler television again that we desperately have a craving for.

“So I feel like it’s this thing that we tend to forget sometimes, and this is a reminder, and it seems like she has spoken to people at the show about it, and hopefully there’s room to sort of move on from it.”

He went on to say that the experience prompted him to reflect that “parody can go too far sometimes”, adding: “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.”

Wood has spoken recently about the impact her teeth have had on her acting career, joking that she would not be accepted in a role as an American because of them. “No Americans have my teeth,” she said. “I think that genuinely is one of the things.”

“I played an American in a play in Chicago, and afterwards this guy in the bar, he was talking to me and he went, ‘I knew it, I knew it. Your accent was great, but I knew you weren’t American. You just don’t look American’.”

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