Saturday Night Live star Chloe Fineman is under fire after an awkward confession to her castmates went viral.
The comedian, 37, is facing scrutiny after she told her colleagues a story about getting fired as a camp counselor for pantsing a six-year-old when she was a teenager.
In a Vanity Fair video of SNL cast members testing how well they know each other, Fineman revealed she was fired because “I pantsed a boy.”
Fineman went on to say that she pulled the little boy’s pants down to get revenge on him for pulling up her shirt. While her colleagues cringed in response, she exclaimed: “It was a different time!”
“He would be like, ‘Hey, could I have a hug?’ And then I’d go to hug him and he’d lift my shirt, like a d***,” Fineman said as her co-stars — Mikey Day, Ashley Padilla, James Austin Johnson, Jane Wickline and Sarah Sherman — looked horrified in the video.
She continued: “And so we were on a hike and I was like, ‘Hey, Ollie, go look over there. It’s a hawk.’ He looked and then I yanked his pants down, and then I was fired.”
The video appears to have been edited after it was published March 31 to remove certain details from Fineman’s retelling, including her saying that the boy was not wearing underwear, and that a school bus drove by while his “little ding a ling” was exposed. Reactions from her fellow cast members were also edited out of the video.
Vanity Fair did not return The Independent’s request for comment on the edits.
After the clip was published March 31, the video quickly gained traction as social media users criticized Fineman for the confession.
“Chloe doing her funny voice while she describes exposing a child's genitals was quite upsetting,” one person commented on the YouTube video. Another wrote, “I’m not sure why in this current climate, Chloe thought that would be a funny story to share or why VF would air it.”
One person wrote on X, “Pulling a kid's pants down at 16 as ‘revenge’? That's not funny, it's straight-up wrong. No wonder they tried to edit it out. Different time or not, some things don't age well.”
Another shared, “can’t comprehend how any public figure in 2026 would share this story proudly and publicly, regardless of whether or not they personally think it’s an issue. HOW can you not foresee how people will react to this. baffling.”
Other critics slammed Vanity Fair for editing the video, with some speculating that Fineman — who is a known member of the Church of Scientology — requested that certain pieces of the story be removed.
“They had an editorial product that they edited after the fact to make something that had already published, captured on record, to benefit the celebrity talent! THIS IS THE ISSUE,” one wrote on X.
Another added: “This Chloe Fineman story is pretty nuts, as is the attempted cover-up by Vanity Fair... The cover-up is always worse than the crime!
Fineman did not return The Independent’s request for comment.
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