Chappell Roan wants fans to know that she doesn’t need them to get outraged every time they think she’s been dissed.
Chappell is featured on the new episode of Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers‘ podcast, Las Culturistas, and during their chat they discuss Bowen’s viral SNL Moo Deng sketch last year. Many of Chappell’s fans were upset because they felt it poked fun at her — but she says she didn’t care in the slightest.
In the sketch, Yang portrayed viral baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng and turned the hippo’s complaints about people gawking at her in her zoo enclosure into a riff on Chappell’s TikTok videos about fans harassing her and her comments about the election. At one point Bowen as Moo Deng said, “Do not yell my name or expect a photo just because I’m your parasocial bestie, or because you appreciate my talent.”
Chappell told Bowen and Matt she “wasn’t even mad” and insisted that she found it funny. What she didn’t understand, she said, is fans’ anger about it. “People don’t have to get mad on my behalf,” she told Bowen. “We’re fine. What is there to be mad about?”
“It’s SNL. It’s comedy. It is so lighthearted. It is to me harmless,” she continued. “I just don’t know the line anymore.”
“Even if you didn’t think the sketch was funny, you don’t have to say anything,” Chappell reminded fans. “You can always not say something. And you know what? People sticking up for me in that situation or not sticking up for me made me feel no different. I didn’t feel protected and I didn’t feel unprotected. I didn’t need it either way because I was not offended.”
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