AFPThe White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood says she does not regret speaking out against a viral comedy sketch that poked fun at her teeth.
The actor and writer was portrayed on variety show Saturday Night Live (SNL) with a pronounced accent and large teeth for a joke about fluoride – a gag that Wood criticised at the time as “mean and unfunny”.
Speaking about the furore over the skit, Wood, 31, told News: “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.”
She added that on seeing the sketch, she thought: “I have a choice here to go in and be embarrassed about it and just say ‘I didn’t like that. It was mean’.”
The SNL sketch, which aired in April, was criticised by one viewer as taking “a screeching turn into 1970s misogyny” – a comment Wood reposted on social media – and prompted a climbdown by show bosses, who Wood said apologised.
Speaking during a promotional tour for her new romantic-comedy drama Film Club, Wood said: “No matter what chaos came from it, I’m still happy for me and my personal journey that I said something.”
She added: “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.”
Authentic emotions are a central theme of One and iPlayer drama Film Club, which Wood co-wrote with collaborator Ralph Davis.
The series, written during lockdown, deals with loneliness, love and mental health – influenced by Wood’s own experience of the pandemic.
It centres around a Friday night film club held in a suburban garage in Greater Manchester, which transforms into a fantasy cinema.
At its heart is a will-they-won’t-they romantic connection between Wood’s housebound character Evie and her best friend, barrister Noa, played by Nabhaan Rizwaan.
Reflecting on the pandemic, Wood says films were “the only way that we could feel any sense of escape and any sense of the world”.
And so the idea for Film Club was born.
/ Gaumont / Ben BlackallThe series is also a chance for viewers to see Suranne Jones in her first comedic role this decade, as the mother of Wood’s Evie.
After dramatic stints in Doctor Foster, Vigil and this summer’s Netflix-hit Hostage, Jones, 47, connected in a different way to the role of Evie’s mother Suz.
“Suz is quite neurotic herself but doesn’t think she is,” the actress said, “and so when you meet Evie, Suz doesn’t know she is the byproduct of Suz in a way – she’s literally looking in a mirror every day.”
Once she read the part, Jones messaged Wood on Instagram before a chance meeting in the loos at the Baftas helped seal the deal.
“She’s so clever and brilliant and deep and funny and all of those things,” Jones said of Wood. “And it’s all in the script.”
Meanwhile, the pair’s next projects sound rather different. For Jones, a new series of Vigil beckons, with filming in Scotland and Norway.
As for Wood? “I’m actually doing a movie in London, which never happens,” she laughed. “I try and do a bank robbery and it goes wrong. It’s very Thelma and Louise.”
Film Club will be available on iPlayer from 7 October and begins on One on 8 October.
