This week’s episode of “SNL” started with a big surprise: Scarlett Johansson mockingly ridiculing Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt.
Britt of course became a national laughing stock for her incredibly strange and off-putting response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, a performance so bad even other Republicans disliked it. And it got worse for her on Saturday, when it was proved that a major part of her response — a horrifying story about sex trafficking that she tried to blame on Joe Biden — turned out to be essentially all lies.
The cold open began with a light parody of Joe Biden’s narrative-busting, high energy delivery of the speech, but then it transitioned quickly to Johansson as Britt.
The “Black Widow” star started the bit by quoting Britt pretty much verbatim, but very quickly began mocking Britt’s melodramatic and insincere acting. “I’ll be auditioning the part of scary mom, performing an original monologue called ‘This country is hell.’ I’m not just a senator, I’m a wife, a mother and the craziest woman in the Target parking lot,” she said.
Johansson then ran through a parody of some of the cringiest parts from Britt’s speech, and then nodded to the aforementioned sex trafficking story she told, and the numerous falsehoods in it
“First and foremost, I’m a mom. And like any mom, I’m going to do a pivot out of nowhere into a shockingly violent story about sex trafficking. Rest assured every detail about it is a real, except the year, where it took place and, who was president when it happened,” she said.
Johansson’s Britt did a quick detour to try to sell the bejeweled cross she was wearing, QVC style, before returning to the politics: “As I was saying, the American Dream has turned into a nightmare.”
Nodding to the fact that the response was filmed in Britt’s (apparently very empty kitchen, Johansson said, “Kitchens are where families have the hard conversations, like the one we’ll have tomorrow about how mommy freaked out the entire country.”
“Ask yourself, are you better off today than you were four years ago? Back in the good old days of 2020, the year that nothing that happens?” Johansson as Britt continued.
After some more references to to Britt’s politics, Johansson’s Britt then did a parody of the teacup scene from “Get Out,” made some more cutting summations, and then came “Live from New York.” You can watch the whole thing above now.
