Ayo Edebiri hosted Saturday Night Live earlier this year, with musical guest Jennifer Lopez. However, the actress and comedian found herself in hot water given her past comments insulting J.Lo’s career.
Ayo Edebiri has been in the entertainment industry for a decade plus, but it wasn’t until the FX hit show The Bear came out that she finally got her breakout role. For her role as Sydney, she won multiple awards, including a Golden Globe, a Critics’ Choice Award, and a Primetime Emmy.
With her brand-new popularity came a lot of exposure, and Ayo Edebiri was tapped to host Saturday Night Live this year, a huge accomplishment for someone so early in their career. Alongside her, she had Jennifer Lopez as a musical guest, which was very ironic given her previous insults.
Ayo Edebiri’s past comments about Jennifer Lopez, explained
Before her time on The Bear, Ayo Edebiri appeared on the “Scam Goddess” podcast in 2020. During the chat, she claimed Jennifer Lopez’s career is “one long scam.” She went on to note, “I appreciate a good scam. Today, I was actually thinking about one of my favorite scams of all time, because J. Lo is performing at the Super Bowl halftime show.”
“Well, that’s the thing. She thinks she’s on multiple tracks, but it’s not her.” Ayo continued, “I think she thinks that she’s still good even though she’s not singing for most of these songs,” she added. This only added fuel to the ongoing allegations that J.Lo’s track vocals were replaced on several songs. “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,” Edebiri explained. “It’s like, ‘Doing what?’ Not singing, obviously!”
She probably didn’t think her comments would ever matter, the actress and comedian found herself in awkward tension when she had to work with Lopez herself on the live show. Her comments resurfaced ahead of their time together on Saturday Night Live, which led to Ayo having to defend her comments.
Jennifer Lopez’s reaction to Ayo Edebiri’s comments
In a February cover story for Variety, Jennifer Lopez opened up about talking to the actress backstage. “She was mortified and very sweet,” says Lopez. “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 f***ing sorry, it was so awful of me.’” Lopez just shook it off. “It’s funny. I’ve heard similar things said about me throughout my career, so it really didn’t affect me.”
In a cover story for Vanity Fair, Ayo Edebiri confirmed there is no beef between her and Jennifer Lopez, dismissing the media comments as “absurd.” She explained, “That would be like Mr. Bean and Mick Jagger beefing,” she says, “and I’m obviously Mr. Bean. She’s J.Lo!” Edebiri added, “She was very chill and nice about it.”
The two even got to laugh it out during a sketch on SNL poking fun at the mishap, so everything turned out great.
