SNL Alum Names 1 Wrong Sketch That Wasnt Cool With Hillary Clinton
Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Julia Sweeney said her 1993 Chelsea Clinton impression sparked a none-too-happy letter from then-first lady and future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“I understood what Hillary was saying, especially now that I’m a parent. It’s like, ‘Yeah fuck off.’ I mean, don’t play kids. That was wrong, she was right, that was wrong,” Sweeney told the “Fly on the Wall” podcast, hosted by fellow “SNL” alum Dana Carvey and David Spade.
“People were saying how unattractively I was playing Chelsea and all I did was not wear makeup and put braces on,” Sweeney said of the sketch where Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks played President Bill Clinton and Hillary, respectively.
“If you say that, you’re saying I’m unattractive. Like, maybe that’s so, but I wasn’t trying to play her unattractive.”
Sweeney never played Chelsea Clinton again on “SNL” although the show poked fun at the then-first daughter’s looks in a 1992 “Wayne’s World” sketch.
Mike Myers, who played Wayne in the recurring sketch, apologized to the Clintons the following year.
“We felt, upon reflection, that if it was in any way hurtful, it wasn’t worth it,” show creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels said at the time. “She’s a kid, a kid who didn’t choose to be in public life.”
Chelsea, in an episode of the Apple TV+ series “Gutsy” with her mother, said it was wrong.
“When SNL made fun of me, I was like, ‘Wow. A group of adults, sat in a room, all decided this was a good idea.’ Nobody thought like, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t make fun of children,’” she said last year.
“I was like, ‘I just don’t think I think that’s funny or OK. So I just don’t think comedy is funny or OK.’”
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