Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth were not up for discussion when she won a Bafta playing a sixth former on Netflix sensation Sex Education. They were not up for discussion when she took over the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret on the West End, or when she starred alongside David Morrissey in BBC Three’s excellent odd-couple sitcom Daddy Issues, or when she played bereaved mother and campaigner Tracey Taylor in Jack Thorne’s Toxic Town. Her talent, her garrulousness, her endearing charisma – sure. But not her teeth.
Since The White Lotus exposed her to a stratospheric level of American fame, however, Wood’s teeth have become fair game – and an obsession. Aren’t they “unusual”? Aren’t they “striking”? Aren’t they “inspiring”? Do they stand as a mark of defiance, of natural beauty, of individualism?
The conversation is regressive, a distraction from her best performance yet, and totally ridiculous. It is an alarming sign of just how backwards things have got that we see anyone who has not changed their appearance to look the same as everybody else as making a deliberate and bold political statement about beauty standards. Yet again and again, Wood had had to talk about her teeth – how she feels about them, whether she got bullied, when she started embracing them, and how they have affected her confidence.
It would be exhausting enough having so much scrutiny about one feature of your face for two months straight without Saturday Night Live having a pop. Alas, this weekend, America’s beloved and bewildering 50-year-old comedy institution, that purported champion of satire and speaking truth to power, that talent factory for future Hollywood megastars, reached for the lowest hanging fruit possible.
In “The White Potus”, a parody skit that transplanted the Trumps and their cronies into a Thai wellness resort, comedian Sarah Sherman dressed up as Wood’s White Lotus hippie Chelsea, and in a wig, clown teeth and the worst Manchester accent ever committed to broadcast, she made a stupid joke about not knowing what fluoride is.
It has not gone down well, least of all with Wood, who posted a series of earnest and honest Instagram stories sharing her disappointment. “Such a shame cuz I had such a great time watching it a couple of weeks ago,” she wrote. “Yes, take the piss for sure – that’s what the show is about – but there must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way?”
Look, there’s a place for caricature comedy – though I’d argue even Spitting Image feels decades out of date. But making a 31-year-old woman’s appearance the punchline when every other target of a sketch is a member of the Washington establishment responsible for tanking the US economy leaves an exceptionally sour taste. It is also inaccurate. As Wood herself pointed out, prompting SNL to apologise, “I have big gap teeth, not bad teeth. The rest of the skit was punching up, and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on.”
It’s not just dumb, poorly executed, and mean-spirited; it’s personal. And watching it really stings because what makes Wood unique has never been her teeth but her vulnerability. She is a magnetic actor – one of the most exciting young British talents on screen – with a rare combination of chutzpah and childlike silliness that shines through her performances.
Off-screen, she is down to earth, uninhibited, generous, and never desperate to project self-assured cool. She is happy to talk about her family, her insecurities (her teeth among them, but also a teenage eating disorder and body dysmorphia), her changing feelings about sex scenes, about being in the process of autism and ADHD diagnoses and how overwhelming it is to be thrust into the limelight by a drama as hyped as The White Lotus.
Part of her appeal is how interesting, funny, and open she is in a celebrity culture so otherwise dominated by blandness, sycophancy and self-protection. She has an approachability that forces us to relate to her. She might have exploded onto the A-list, but she still feels like a girl from Stockport you might have met on a night out. Mocking her feels especially cruel when she feels like such a refreshing force for good.
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Saturday Night Live, a sketch show that rests too much on its legacy and relies on lazy impressions and pastiche rather than wit, would do well to remember that not everyone is fair game – especially given it recently announced a British version that is surely doomed to fail.
Cheap shots about a woman’s appearance belong in the past – along with tedious old gags about British dentistry. Neither belongs on SNL, a programme so terminally unfunny that no British person could ever have cracked a smile long enough to show them our teeth in the first place.
