Aimee Lou Wood has hit out at her depiction in Saturday Night Live’s White Lotus skit as “unfunny and mean”.
During Saturday night’s episode (12 April), SNL cast members reimagined the hit HBO series The White Lotus as The White Potus, which saw Donald Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) attempt to unwind at an exotic vacation resort while secretly panicking about the future financial state of America amid to tariff policy chaos, surrounded by Ivanka (Scarlett Johansson) and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (Jon Gries).
The storyline parodies that of the most recent season of The White Lotus, which sees Jason Isaac’s character Timothy Ratliff consider murdering his entire family when he finds out that he’s bankrupt while on holiday at the luxury Thailand resort.
The SNL skit also attempted to recreate the dynamic between Rick (Walton Goggins) and his Mancunian younger girlfriend Chelsea (Lou Wood), with RFK Jr (Jonn Hamm) rambling about fluoride in water to his confused girlfriend, played by SNL cast member Sarah Sherman, who darts off to kill and eat a monkey.
In the skit, Sherman puts on a bizarre British accent and appears to be wearing exaggerated prosthetic teeth in an attempt to parody Lou Wood’s appearance.
In a post shared on her Instagram Story on Sunday (13 April), Lou Wood has called the skit “unfunny and mean”.
“Yes, take the piss for sure – that’s what the show is about – but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
“Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple weeks ago,” she added.
Lou Wood, who rose to prominence for her performance as Aimee Gibbs in Netflix’s award-winning series Sex Education, has been the focal point of a positive conversation surrounding Hollywood beauty standards since she joined The White Lotus.
Her natural teeth have been praised as refreshing amid the perfect-looking veneers that dominate the big and small screens.
Speaking to GQ Hype in a recent interview, Lou Wood said that she was “happy” about the conversation, but she felt as though she wasn’t getting to talk about her work.
“It makes me really happy that it’s symbolising rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit,” she said.
“The whole conversation is just about my teeth, and it makes me a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work. They think it’s nice because they’re not criticising.”
“And, I have to go there… I don’t know if it was a man, would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”
The SNL sketch has been subject to mixed reactions from viewers, with one person sharing a picture of Sherman in the scene on X/Twitter, writing: “The ‘White Potus’ SNL sketch was so bad and I think this was the final nail in the coffin for me.”
However, others have praised it for its impressive cameos and for being “one of the funniest” SNL sketches in recent years.
