Aimee Lou Wood in “The White Lotus” Season 3.
The White Lotus Season 3 star Aimee Lou Wood says Saturday Night Live’s parody of her character Chelsea from the show went too far.
Chelsea, of course, met a sad fate along with her much-older boyfriend, Rick (Walton Goggins) in The White Lotus Season 3 finale a week ago. The Mike White-created show this season, which was set in Thailand, portrays Chelsea as an eternal optimist and hopeless romantic whose dedication to her boyfriend ultimately leads to her untimely demise.
SNL, of course, didn’t take long to parody Chelsea and the large ensemble of characters from The White Lotus Season 3 on Saturday night in a film skit that skewered President Donald Trump and his family titled The White POTUS.
The skit featured James Austin Johnson playing Trump in the guise of Timothy Ratliff (Jason Isaacs), while Chloe Fineman’s First Lady Melania Trump mimicked Timothy’s wife, Victoria (Parker Posey).
Guest host Jon Hamm dressed like Rick to play Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was accompanied by a character parodying Wood’s Chelsea, played by Sarah Sherman.
Sherman’s parody of Wood’s character gave the character overly pronounced gapped teeth. During the short, Hamm’s Kennedy — who was appointed the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by Trump — made the remark, “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?”
In response, Sherman’s Chelsea-type character replied, “Fluoride? What’s that?” while showing off her teeth with a wide-eyed, inquisitive look.
The audience attending SNL at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City laughed in response to the parody, but Wood didn’t think it was funny.
“I did find the SNL thing mean and unfunny,” Wood wrote in the first of a series of Instagram stories about the skit. “Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple 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?”
Wood then added in a separate Instagram story post, “I am not thin-skinned. I actually love being the taken the piss 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 up and I/Chelsea was the one punched down on.”
‘SNL’ Apologized To Aimee Lou Wood For ‘The White Lotus’/Chelsea Parody
During the series of Instagram story posts by Aimee Lou Wood after seeing The White Lotus/Chelsea parody, the actor noted that she received “thousands of messages in agreement with me.”
Clearly one of those messages got to someone at Saturday Night Live, as in another Instagram story, Wood noted, “I’ve had apologies from SNL.”
Wood did not, however, say who delivered the apology.
The White Lotus Season 3 was Wood’s first major series after various appearances in the past decade in British television and film. In a 2020 interview with Stylist about her breakout role in the British-produced Netflix series Sex Education, Wood said she didn’t think her teeth impacted her ability to land roles.
“It’s completely in my head,” Wood said. “It’s a myth I’ve told myself. I had it in my brain that I’m not conventional-looking enough and that’s a mental barrier I’ve had to overcome.”
As a result of her acclaimed turn as Aimee Gibbs in Sex Education, Wood said she was heartened by the feedback she received from the show’s viewers.
“I’m getting hundreds of messages from people going, ‘Oh my god, you’ve got teeth like mine. Now I go to school and people think I’m cool because I look like Aimee.’ Instead of it being ‘Bugs Bunny’ or whatever. Because that’s what happened to me,” Wood told Stylist.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timlammers/2025/04/13/the-white-lotus-star-says-snl-parody-of-chelsea-mean-and-unfunny/