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Hillary Clinton

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Hillary Clinton was not happy with Saturday Night Live‘s portrayal of her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea Clinton. According to David Spade, SNL alum Julia Sweeney‘s impression of Chelsea prompted the former Secretary of State to complain to the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels.

While chatting on Spade and Dana Carvey‘s Fly on the Wall podcast, Sweeney — who starred alongside the two men on SNL from 1990-1994 — discussed the lack of female representation during her time on the hit sketch comedy show.

When it was brought up that Sarah Palin and Hillary offered “two political parts” for women, Spade remembered the 1993 episode in which Sweeney had played Chelsea, then 13, and it “rubbed somebody wrong.”

“Yeah, Hillary,” Sweeney admitted, before revealing that the politician “wrote a letter” to Michaels regarding the issue.

“People were saying how unattractively I was playing Chelsea, and all I did was not wear makeup and put braces on,” Sweeney said. “If you say that, you’re saying I’m unattractive! Which maybe that’s so. I wasn’t trying to play her unattractive.”

She continued, “I just didn’t wear makeup and put on braces. That was it, and a wig. A long wig,” before adding, “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.”

Lorne Michaels and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton — Photo: Getty Images

While Sweeney never played Chelsea again, the show found itself in hot water for a separate Wayne’s World sketch in which Mike Myers and Carvey’s characters compared her looks to then-Vice President Al Gore’s daughters, resulting in Michaels releasing an apology to the teenager on behalf of the show.

“We felt, upon reflection, that if it was in any way hurtful, it wasn’t worth it,” Michaels said at the time, per Deadline. “She’s a kid, a kid who didn’t choose to be in public life.”

Chelsea, now 43, recently looked back on being mocked on SNL in an episode of her Apple TV+ series Gutsy.

“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, per Newsweek. “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.'”