On Aimee Lou Wood’s Pitch-Perfect Response to Bullying Dressed Up as “Comedy”

Image may contain Aimee Lou Wood Head Person Face Happy Smile Accessories Jewelry Necklace Adult and Body Part

Photo: HBO

If there was one steady fan favorite during the third season of The White Lotus, it was astrology-obsessed Chelsea, played by Aimee Lou Wood, previously best known for her role in Netflix’s Sex Education. She was charming, funny, a good-time girl. But, as the show went on, conversations very quickly turned to the 31-year-old Mancunian’s teeth. Specifically, the fact that they don’t conform to the straighter-than-straight Hollywood norm (she has a rather charming overbite and a slight gap between her two front teeth…no veneers, basically).

All of this talk about Wood’s teeth, as well as the sudden framing of her as a poster girl for accepting your “flaws,” unsurprisingly started to feel like a drag for the actress. She recently told GQ that she felt like she had become just “a pair of front teeth,” adding: “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.”

Though being congratulated for, apparently, simply existing with a gap in her teeth was clearly exasperating for Wood, things went a step further at the weekend with a poorly judged Saturday Night Live sketch that highlighted a darker side to this sort of discourse. In the skit, dubbed “The White Potus,” Wood’s appearance was mercilessly and, if we’re being honest, cruelly mocked, in a way that felt completely at odds with the rest of the segment.

Image may contain Aimee Lou Wood Brown Hair Hair Person Adult Face Head Photography Portrait Blonde and Body Part

Aimee Lou Wood on the red carpet earlier this year.

Photo: Getty Images

Let me explain. As you can probably guess from the title, the sketch largely poked fun at political figures, inserting them into the White Lotus universe. Most significantly, the wealthy Ratliff family (played on the show by Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, and co), were recast as President Donald Trump and his family, in a riff on the current tariff situation.

Related Video

Watch the 2025 Met Gala Red Carpet Replay – Presented by eBay & 1800 Tequila

But SNL kept Wood’s character, Chelsea, in the mix, with Sarah Sherman donning a set of prosthetic teeth for the role. While the jokes performed by the rest of the cast were political, hers were focused on her physical appearance. The lowest blow? When Sherman-as-Chelsea asked: “Fluoride, what’s that?”—a gag presumably designed to imply that not only does Chelsea have poor oral hygiene, but she’s stupid, too. It taps into old stereotypes that suggest un-straightened teeth denote a person who is dim or slovenly.

Putting to one side for a moment the fact that gags about Brits having rubbish teeth are lazy and overdone (Austin Powers called, it wants its jokes back), the whole segment felt like an unnecessary attack on a woman who has spoken openly about being bullied because of her teeth when she was younger.

Wood herself, posting on her Instagram Stories, said she found the sketch “mean and unfunny,” adding that while she is happy to be the butt of the joke, this one could and should have been “cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap.” “The rest of the skit was punching up, and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on,” she continued. Sharing responses from her followers—some of whom had told her she inspired them not to change their own teeth—Wood later revealed she’d recieved an apology from the show. She concluded by quoting someone else who said: “It was a sharp and funny skit until it suddenly took a screeching turn into 1970s misogyny.” Amen.

Really, it’s kind of wild that having real teeth—with a gap or otherwise—has been made into such a big deal. And it says a lot about where we’re at with regards to Hollywood beauty standards, if “not having veneers” is essentially tantamount to bad oral hygiene. What next? Is not having botox the same as not cleaning your face? And, like Wood herself says, if you’re going to take a swipe, at least make it smart and funny. Wood is rare in that she doesn’t conform to the fillers-and-veneers combo that society demands of women in the public eye, only to deride them for it in the same breath. Good for her. Maybe the rest of us could shut our mouths for a bit?