Saturday Night Live returned from its winter hiatus this past Saturday with a slew of jokes and impressions targeted at the television shows everyone’s been bingeing from The Office to The Queen’s Gambit. However, author Fran Lebowitz let Radio Andy host Andy Cohen (Project Runway) know on Wednesday that she has not been watching any of these shows nor has she seen Bowen Yang’s (Saturday Night Live, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens) impression of her from Netflix docuseries Pretend It’s A City. According to The Wrap, Lebowitz reportedly has no phone, computer or access to Netflix, and she’s not interested in changing that anytime soon.
Recapping Lebowitz’s Wednesday interview with Cohen on SiriusXM, The Hollywood Reporter shares that Lebowitz only found out about the Saturday Night Live im her answering machine. According to Tpression because friends left her messages about it on The Hollywood Reporter, Lebowitz considered whether she would have tuned in to Saturday Night Live if she had known an impression of her was going to happen, but ultimately decided she would not have been interested.
“I generally don’t like to watch myself and this has always been true, even when I looked a lot better,” The Hollywood Reporter quotes Lebowitz “I don’t like to watch myself. I don’t like to hear my voice. I would never watch myself on television when I know I’m on television.” Vulture finds this a shame, citing that Yang’s impression of the author on Weekend Update as one of the highlights of Saturday’s episode of the long-running NBC sketch comedy program. Yang was joined behind-the-desk by Kyle Mooney (Saturday Night Live, Brigsby Bear) as an easily-impressed Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Godfellas), hyperbolizing the exchanges between the two New York icons prevalent in Netflix’s Pretend It’s A City.
Even if she wanted to, the 70-year-old Lebowitz shared that it would be difficult for her to watch the sketch after-the-fact due to her lack of internet access. Contrastingly, the 80-year-old singer and recent Twitter sensation Dionne Warwick was right on-top of the Saturday Night Live impression of her performed by Ego Nwodim (Saturday Night Live, Brockmire) back in December.
Vulture characterized Lebowitz’s Cohen interview as par-for-the-course and ultimately concluded that “there’s no arguing with Fran.” Yang shared the Vulture article on his Instagram story Wednesday night, finding humor in Lebowitz’s response as well.
Fans will have to wait and see if Yang ever reprises his impression of Lebowitz on Saturday Night Live for any reason, because Lebowitz herself certainly won’t be watching.