7 Celebs Who Hated Their ‘SNL’ Impression
Aimee Lou Wood made waves last weekend when she called out Saturday Night Live for a White Potus sketch that featured a “mean” impression — mainly, Sarah Sherman impersonating Wood with a massive pair of prosthetic front teeth. “Last thing I’ll say on the matter. I am not thin-skinned. I actually love being taken the piss out of when it’s clever and in good spirits,” she said on her Instagram Stories, per Deadline. “But the joke was about fluoride. I have big gap teeth, not bad teeth.”
Wood is hardly the first to get prickly about SNL’s insensitive impressions. Here are seven more celebrities who hated being ridiculed on Saturday Night Live…
Britney Spears
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Spears might be the first celebrity to get irked by two different impressions.
When Chloe Fineman goofed on Spears after she released her audio biography, she fired back through her manager. “Wow. The writers of SNL are getting worse and worse,” Spears rep Cade Hudson griped. “No wonder you all reached out to me to get Britney on the show. SNL is on life support. You all are pathetic and this Chloe (Fineman) isn’t funny. Did you find her on Craigslist or something?”
Britney didn’t like it any better when Ariana Grande took a swing, per People: “I've heard better.”
Mark Wahlberg
What was Wahlberg’s reaction to Andy Samberg’s impression? “I’m going to crack that big fucking nose of his,” he told Jimmy Kimmel. “Then I’m going to tell him, ‘Say hi to your mother for me.’”
Sarah Palin
“I know that they portrayed me as an idiot, and I hated that,” Palin says in SNL oral history Live From New York. “If I ran into Tina Fey again today, I would say: ‘You need to at least pay for my kids’ braces or something from all the money that you made off of pretending that you’re me! My goodness, you capitalized on that! Can’t you contribute a little bit? Jeez!’”
Steve Harvey
Harvey joked that Kenan Thompson was afraid to come on his talk show “cause I told him I was gonna knock his ass out as soon as I saw him.” But Harvey wasn’t entirely kidding. “Steve wasn’t overly excited about it in the beginning,” Thompson told Hollywood Reporter. “But he grew to love it. I don’t do it out of any malice.”
Barbra Streisand
In the ramp-up to SNL50, Laraine Newman confessed that Streisand went looking for her at a party after Newman performed a narcissistic parody on SNL. “I was at my friend’s son’s bar mitzvah, and she was singing at it,” Newman told Andy Cohen. “And she says, ‘I wanna talk to you.’” Newman wanted no part of a confrontation and snuck out before Streisand could critique her performance.
Kathie Lee Gifford
Kristen Wiig’s Gifford impression was meaner than most, portraying the Today show host as a mean drunk who told dumb sex jokes about hubby Frank. “I don’t think it’s that funny,” Gifford griped on Today. “I think I’m going to sue (Wiig) for ruining my song! Can’t she get another job?”
Johnny Carson
Is this the impression that pushed Carson into retirement? Dana Carvey’s brutal Carsenio mash-up combined Carson with Arsenio Hall, mimicking a desperate desire to appeal to a younger demo. Carvey remembered Jay Leno relaying Carson’s reaction to the bits: “Johnny would walk down at NBC in Burbank and just yell out, ‘They’re making fun of me! Now it’s time to go.’”
