Mayim Bialik looked back on a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that made fun of her physical appearance in a recent interview.
The “Jeopardy!” host, 47, starred in the hit ’90s sitcom “Blossom,” and a 1994 “SNL” parody that mocked the show at the time involved a prosthetic nose.
The skit saw actress Melanie Hutsell playing Bialik as her character, Blossom Russo.
In an essay for Variety, the “Big Bang Theory” alum penned: “The actress portraying me was dancing and mugging for the camera and she was hilarious.”
“But. She wore a prosthetic nose. In order to truly convey that she was ‘Blossom,’ she wore a fake, big nose,” Bialik added.
She went on in her candid article: “I don’t know if it was significantly larger than my real nose and I don’t care to remember.”
“I remember that it struck me as odd. And it confused me. No one else on the show was parodied for their features. In MAD magazine, everyone is caricatured, but in this rendition of parody, it was just me that was singled out. More specifically, it was my nose,” she wrote.
She revealed that she felt embarrassed by the portrayal of her facial features — and how it represented “Jewface.”
The term has come to reference how it negatively characterizes stereotypical portrayals of Jewish people in art.
Bailik — who practices Judaism — said that she “tried to forget” the sketch and “hoped no one noticed” it at the time. “It wasn’t subtle. [My friends] would all see it and I felt ashamed,” she wrote.
Bialik’s comments come amid Bradley Cooper being ripped for using a large fake nose in his Leonard Bernstein film “Maestro.”
The “A Star is Born” director, 48, was also criticized earlier this year for being non-Jewish and for playing a man of Jewish origins.
The game show emcee even touched upon Cooper’s controversy in her essay, saying: “I started scrutinizing the photos of Bradley and Leonard and wondering if it was necessary.”
She went on: “I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know if it matters how I feel. I assume it matters how his family feels. But maybe it doesn’t?”
The late conductor’s family has expressed their approval over Cooper’s costume choices.
“Girls all over the world used to tell me that they had never seen a Jewish girl like me on TV before they saw me on ‘Blossom,’” Bialik said. “Many said they knew I was Jewish and it made them proud to be. That was so touching to me, and it still is.”
Source link
