- Chelsea Clinton said she didn't think "SNL" jokes about her when she was young were "funny or OK."
- A "Wayne's World" sketch on the show made jokes about Clinton's appearance when she was 13.
Chelsea Clinton said that she didn't believe jokes about her as a child on shows like "Saturday Night Live" were "funny or OK."
In the first episode of "Gutsy," the eight-episode Apple TV+ series that Chelsea hosts alongside her mother Hillary Clinton, she reflected on growing up in the spotlight as the child of a sitting president.
"I had a different experience with comedy in some ways than a lot of people, because I was made fun of so much as a child, by people who were professional comics," Chelsea said when asked if she would ever do stand-up comedy.
She said that comments from conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh were easier to brush off because she knew that they had more to do with her parents than her.
"But 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 maybe we shouldn't make fun of children,'" she said. "I was like, 'Oh, I just don't think that's funny or OK, so I just don't think comedy's funny or OK.'"
A "Wayne's World" sketch in a 1992 episode of "Saturday Night Live" included remarks on then-13-year-old Chelsea's looks, the Seattle Times reported that year. Mike Myers, who played Wayne, wrote an apology letter to the Clintons, and "SNL" executive producer said that after "reflection," if the sketch was "hurtful" it "wasn't worth it," per the Seattle Times. The joke was cut from subsequent reruns of the sketch.
In a 1993 interview with People, Bill Clinton said that "you gotta be pretty insensitive" to make jokes about a child.
"We really work hard on making sure that Chelsea doesn't let other people define her sense of self-worth," he said at the time.