Aimee Lou Wood has revealed how she has continued to find her voice after she called out the “mean and unfunny” Saturday Night Live impression.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, The White Lotus and Sex Education star detailed an incident on the set of Anxious People, the Marc Forster feature co-starring Angelina Jolie.
Lou Wood said she started to panic while filming an emotional scene because she was getting directions from shouting crew members. According to Harper’s Bazaar, she asked for one direction, one voice, and no hand movements in her line of sight.
“I’ve spent years feeling unable to say anything like that for fear of seeming argumentative – but now I feel like I can take ownership of what I need to thrive, and tell people what won’t work for me,” Lou Wood said. “When I spoke up, all I could see was Angelina giving me a thumbs up. She’s possibly the most famous woman ever, but she’s so normal.”
Lou Wood said she felt a similar sense of catharsis after her SNL intervention, which she said was akin to “breaking a pattern” of not standing up to childhood bullies.
During the April sketch, the cast used a parody of Thailand-set White Lotus Season 3 to poke fun at Wood’s character Chelsea, with Sarah Sherman in a pair of buck teeth. The impression came after Wood expressed how exhausted she is of talking about her teeth.
Lou Wood, who has recently been cast as Pattie Boyd in Sam Mendes’ The Beatles — A Four-Film Cinematic Event, told Harper’s Bazaar that Hollywood has challenged her mental health.
“I find LA emotionally bulimic, and I say that as an ex-bulimic,” she said. “It is this super-sized adventure where everyone’s talking about you all the time and you have to talk about yourself all the time. And then I leave, and I want to throw it all up.”
Deadline first revealed Lou Wood’s casting in Anxious People. The synopsis reads: “The day before Christmas Eve, investment banker Zara (Jolie) begrudgingly finds herself mingling with a group of strangers at an open house. When a reluctant bank robber, Grace (Wood), inadvertently takes the group hostage, chaos and oversharing ensues, secrets are revealed and literally nothing goes according to plan.”