Fran Lebowitz is well aware of the recent Saturday Night Live sketch in which she was impersonated — but she did not see it. Still, Lebowitz has some thoughts.
On Wednesday, while a guest on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, the iconic writer noted that she has no way of viewing it now. Yes, the “Weekend Update” segment starring Bowen Yang as Lebowitz is on YouTube, where it currently has more than 694,000 views. But Lebowitz explained to Cohen that she does not own a cellphone or computer.
However, she does have an answering machine. And that is how she found out about the bit from the Jan. 29 show.
“I went into the kitchen where there’s my answering machine, a device which you may have to describe to your listeners,” she quipped. “There were messages on it, and I thought something horrible happened, someone died, you know? And so I got these messages. But no, I didn’t see.”
Lebowitz, who along with Martin Scorsese is featured in the new Pretend It’s a City docuseries on Netflix, said even if offered, she would not want to see the sketch now. There is, of course, a detailed explanation.
“I generally don’t like to watch myself and this has always been true, even when I looked a lot better,” she began. “I don’t like to watch myself. I don’t like to hear my voice. I would never watch myself on television when I know I’m on television. And people say, ‘Why don’t you want to watch?’ I say, ‘Well, I know what I said, and I don’t want to watch it.’”
She continued, “I’m trying to guess if I had known it was going to be on, would I have watched it? I probably would not have, but I would have at least known it was going to be on. So I really knew nothing about this. They certainly didn’t alert me that this was going to be on. And so I was surprised by it. Yes, because I know it’s a very big network television show, and I would imagine that they would expect their viewers to know what they’re talking about.”
Watch the SNL sketch below.
