Ayo Edebiri has insisted there is no truth to rumours of a beef with Jennifer Lopez, calling the idea “absurd” after comments made by Edebiri in the past nearly overshadowed their Saturday Night Live episode early this year.
As Edebiri was preparing to guest host Saturday Night Live in February, a clip from a 2020 podcast went viral with The Bear star saying Lopez’s career was a “scam”.
“That would be like Mr Bean and Mick Jagger beefing,” she told Vanity Fair, adding that the idea of a beef was absurd.
“And I’m obviously Mr Bean. She’s J Lo!”
In the 2020 clip from the podcast Scam Goddess, Edebiri agreed with host Laci Mosley’s claim that Lopez’s “whole career is one long scam”.
“Well, that’s the thing, she thinks she’s on multiple tracks, but it’s not her. I think she thinks that she’s still good, even though she’s not singing for most of these songs,” Edebiri said.
“A lot of the writeups 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.”
The clip went viral soon after it was announced that Edebiri, basking in the success of The Bear on the awards circuit, would be hosting Saturday Night Live and Lopez, rolling out her album This Is Me…Now, would be the musical guest.
Edebiri addressed the controversy on the SNL episode itself, saying in a sketch: “OK, OK, we get it. It’s wrong to leave mean comments, or post comments just for clout, or run your mouth on a podcast and you don’t consider the impact because you’re 24 and stupid.”
After the episode aired, Lopez said Edebiri had come to her with a tearful apology and they had cleared the air.
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“She was mortified and very sweet,” Lopez told Variety.
“She came to my dressing room and apologised with tears in her eyes, saying how terrible it was that she had said those things,” she added.
“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.’”
Edebiri confirmed the interaction to Vanity Fair. “She was very chill and nice about it,” she said of Lopez.
Edebiri described hosting SNL as a dream come true. “SNL is something that in my bones, that I dreamed of as a comedian, as a young kid,” she said. “That to me is a pinnacle of success.”
Edebiri will next be seen on the Emmy-winning show The Bear, when it returns for its third season on 27 June.
