Or do they?
I’m a few days late on this because Grammys and Barney but I also think it’s been overlooked by the gossip ecosystem at large because of the Grammys, even though there really could be some interesting gossip here.
Let’s start with Ayo Edebiri who hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time this past weekend and from what I’ve seen so far (only watched up to the start of Update), she f-cking crushed it. As we know she would. But also, as we know SNL would – because my theory/hope is that they were saving the good sh-t for Ayo’s week. She was adorable (and emotional) during the opening monologue, so right off the top she had the audience, because how could anyone resist that moment, the way she seemed to experiencing, in real time, the “omg is this really happening to me” disbelief?!
And that sketch about the Dune popcorn bucket? I loved it. It’s a f-cked up piece of merchandise but it’s also marketing genius because everyone is talking about it and now everyone is going to want it so well done Dune promotions department, you won.
So, yes, Ayo killed it, even though the big story in the hours leading up to SNL, there was a story that broke that threatened to overshadow her achievement. On Friday TMZ dug up a podcast episode of Scam Goddess in which Ayo describes Jennifer Lopez’s entire career as a scam, talks about how she can’t sing, uses other people’s vocals, and also brings up those rumours that have been circulating for decades now about how she claimed her biggest hits.
Awkward AF, obviously, because JLo was the musical guest.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that she had an opportunity to immediately address it, which she did in the “Why’d You Say That?” sketch.
It was embarrassing for JLo, and it was embarrassing for Ayo, but she publicly took her medicine, called herself a dumbass, and delivered an apology in the form of comedic entertainment. We don’t know, however, privately how the situation was handled.
JLo is a professional, she’s never going to show that she’s hurt. She performed two songs, and while I haven’t seen the second, I can say that she gave it everything during her first performance of “Can’t Get Enough”. I don’t love the song itself but I do love her energy, I love that she was out there hustling, and I f-cking LOVE that fit on her.
Still, she didn’t show up for any of the sketches. Like I’m not saying she had to make the whole show about her like Justin Timberlake but, you know, it’s JLo. She’s hosted before. She’s almost always game, so the fact that (as far as I know, anyway) she didn’t pop into one of the sketches, and you would think that they would have written a version of “Why’d You Say It?” with her in it somehow, well, it made me wonder. Wonder, at least, about whether or not she was asked. Whether or not sketches were pitched to her. Whether or not she initially intended to appear and… changed her mind. Or maybe it was never part of the plan for her to be in the sketches? This is the inside baseball I’m dying to know.
What we do know is that JLo attended the after-party so it’s not like she bounced right at 1am and got the f-ck out of there but then again if she did skip the party she probably would have known that that would have become a story too. A source tells ET that, "Jennifer wasn't bothered by the comments and didn't care. She kept it professional." Which is the professional thing to say. Again, there is no way JLo would have allowed anyone to know if she was upset or offended or angry about what Ayo said on that pod. This, by the way, is the key to being JLo. Duana once called her Teflon on our Show Your Work podcast. Nothing ever sticks to her because she keeps it moving – and you don’t have the kind of career that JLo has had without keeping it moving. Or she’ll keep it moving until she can take control of the situation and talk about it on her terms, under her own control.
There is some irony here though. And you know this if you’ve been visiting this site from the beginning. The Movieline interview, remember? This went viral a few month ago but, like, old bitches like me have had this memorised for decades. In 1998, fresh off the success of Selena, but still new to Hollywood, and before we started calling her JLo, she gave an interview with Movieline during which she gave her real opinion on a long list of Hollywood players, including but not limited to Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz, Madonna, Sandra Bullock, and more. Here’s one of my posts from 2011 with some of those quotes.
I can’t imagine that JLo, over the years, hasn’t regretted her comments. She was, like Ayo, young and foolish. And it’s likely that she made amends, because Salma Hayek was one of her targets in that Movieline interview and she and Salma are now friends. If anyone could understand Ayo’s predicament, then, it’s JLo. Let me know your thoughts about this at The Squawk! (app link here)
