Saturday Night Live’s bad Brittany Murphy timing
Updated: As you can see with your own eyes, the Elliott as Murphy video has been pulled down. More about how Hulu/SNL are dealing with this here.
File this under ‘a little too close to home.’ Saturday Night Live featured a segment with Abby Elliott playing a somewhat incoherent, and very full of herself Brittany Murphy during a December 5th segment of Weekend Update with Seth Meyers (the Blake Lively/Rihanna episode):
It’s kind of interesting to note that both Elliott, the daughter of comedian-loved-by-other-comedians Chris Elliott, and Murphy did voices on Mike Judge’s ‘King of the Hill.’ Was there some sort of personal animus between the two that led to Elliott’s impersonation of Murphy? Anyways, that’s one less impersonation she’ll be able to provide to the show.
In the aftermath of Murphy’s death via apparent cardiac arrest, this is looking sort of extra-unkind. As a condolence gift to Murphy’s family, perhaps SNL and Hulu ought to pull this clip down.
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And maybe you shouldn’t have posted it, either?!
Pot, meet the kettle…
I thought about that, but it’s hard to hold something up to scrutiny if you don’t show people exactly what you’re referring to.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] had a look at the post I put up a few hours ago about the bad timing of Saturday Night Live doing a Weekend Update skit [...]
Yeah…the skit was extra hurtful because the producers of SNL obviously knew Murphy was going to die in the near future.
Can’t anything just be a coincidence?
I wouldn’t say it’s anything but a coincidence. But it seems to me like Murphy was not a craven famebot seeking out the spotlight, and even when they did this bit a couple of weeks back, I looked at my viewing companion and we were both like, “What the hell was that all about?” I think it’s a nice thing for her family that Hulu took it down.
In response to another comment. See in context »I understand the raised eyebrows when the bit was done. I agree, it was pretty random…but we’re talking about SNL. There’s a lot of random there.
I do think it’s a nice gesture by NBC to have removed the clip.
In response to another comment. See in context »Any young person’s death is tragic, from any walk of life; what makes this doubly tragic is if the way Brittany Murphy was portrayed on SNL was an accurate portrayal of her recent state of health (if reports such as the one earlier today on http://www.thewrap.com are true) and if that state was so widely known as to become the subject of parody – rather than the subject of outreach and intervention – then society really has dropped to a sad new low. The sane principle applies to any situation in which someone believes someone else may be in trouble or at risk, but people fear speaking out; which is tragic when speaking out could shorten someone’s suffering, or even maybe save a life.
I agree. Murphy doesn’t strike me as a Britney Spears-level phenomenon. I almost wondered if they were doing this because they needed to feature Abby Elliott in some fashion – I think they can find better use for her. This skit felt odd to me when it ran (was Murphy walking off the set of a movie really that big a deal?), and if Elliott is capable of more, the writers, and she herself, did a disservice to put her in that role.
In response to another comment. See in context »