It sounds like Ayo Edebiri learned from her own mistakes that “podcasts are forever” and “authenticity is dangerous and expensive,” even before Tina Fey gave Bowen Yang the same advice on his own podcast last week. After negative comments that the Bottoms actor had made about Jennifer Lopez re-emerged ahead of their shared Saturday Night Live slot earlier this month, Jennifer Lopez says that Edebiri was genuinely sorry for her behavior.
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“She was mortified and very sweet,” Lopez said in a recent interview with Variety. “She came to my dressing room and apologized with tears in her eyes, saying how terrible it was that she had said those things. She felt really badly and loved my performance because we had just done my soundcheck and she actually got to hear me perform. She was just like, ‘I’m so fucking sorry, it was so awful of me.’”
In 2020, Edebiri appeared in an episode of the Scam Goddess podcast, in which host Laci Mosley claimed that Lopez’s “whole career” was “one long scam.” “I think she thinks that she’s still good, even though she’s not singing for most of these songs,” Edebiri responded. “A lot of the write-ups of the songs will be like, ‘J.Lo didn’t have time to make it to the studio.’ Like, ‘J.Lo was busy.’ Doing what? Not singing, obviously.”
There’s a lot to process here. First of all, did Edebiri really have to apologize for this? It wasn’t really all that awful of her to say in the first place. It’s not like nobody shares her opinion. She even said Lopez’s music is still good! Also, it’s unclear whether the alleged apology really went down the way Lopez said it did. Later in the Variety interview, Lopez added that she’d “heard similar things said about me throughout my career, so it really didn’t affect me.” Then why expose the moment at all? The whole thing—especially the apology with tears bit—reads a little like a fake Reddit post where everyone stood up and clapped.
Neither Edebiri nor her team have addressed the apology publicly, save for her cheeky “learn from me” comment on the aforementioned Las Culturistas clip and a meta sketch on SNL in which she claimed that “from now on, we’re going to be a lot more thoughtful about what we post online.” (The A.V. Club also reached out to Edebiri’s reps for comment on this story.) We may never really know what happened in that hallowed Studio 8H dressing room, but hopefully this whole incident doesn’t dissuade Edebiri from being funny and honest about her own industry in the future. Her Letterboxd reviews are too precious to lose.
Emma Keates writes for the A.V. Club, which like The Root, is owned by G/O Media.
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