Comedy Spoofs And Parodies That Upset Celebrities: Oprah And More
Comedic minds are often taken to task for making fun of just about anything. This can range from attempting to make light of serious situations too soon to parodying public figures, the latter of which has resulted in plenty of pissed off famous folks.
Not everyone allows comic mocking to set them off, with Lizzo recently brushing off a South Park parody with the assertion that she’s clearly “that bi**h” if such a long-running and loved series chose to crack jokes at her expense.
“I really showed the world how to love yourself and not give a f**k to the point where these men in Colorado [South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone] know who the f**k I am, and put it on their cartoon that’s been around for 25 years. I’m really that b***h and I show y’all how to not give a f**k and I’m gonna keep on showing you how to not give a f**k.”
Everyone, however, isn’t able to brush off the jabs made in jest. Oprah Winfrey recently opened up about being insulted by an In Living Color sketch that parodied her struggle with weight back in the early 1990s, but she is far from the only star to call foul on sketch shows and cartoons for making fun of her.
From the classic shows like Mad TV and Saturday Night Live to provocative animated series’ like The Boondocks, check out these parodies that truly rubbed celebs the wrong way.
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Oprah – ‘In Living Color’
Image Credit: YouTube Early 1990s sketch show In Living Color made fun of celebrities ranging from Michael Jackson and Vanilla Ice to Oprah Winfrey, who recently opened up about being hurt by a parody of her featured on the show.
During a chat on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, the 70-year-old recalled Kim Wayans playing her in a skit spoofing her talk show.
“In Living Color had done a skit where the woman was doing something, and she just kept eating and getting fatter and fatter and fatter and the comedy bit was that eventually she just exploded,” she recalled the 1990 episode. “The whole audience fell out [laughing] and the woman was me.”
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Ye – ‘South Park’
Image Credit: Comedy Central The artist formerly known as Kanye West was parodied in 2009 on South Park during its Season 13 episode, “Fishsticks.” The comedic take on West being an ego maniac found him hilariously frustrated over not understanding a viral joke regarding fishsticks, yet refusing to allow someone to explain it to him because he’s a self-proclaimed “genius.” The show also parodied his 2008 song “Heartless” with the mocking “Gay Fish.”
Ye was initially a good sport regarding the parody, writing on his blog soon after the episode’s airing, “South Park murdered me last night and it’s pretty damn funny. It hurts my feelings but what can you expect from South Park!”
However, he later took shots at the South Park team over the spoof, rapping on 2010 song “Gorgeous” that he’d “choke a South Park writer with a fishstick.” On Watch The Throne‘s “Made in America” he spit, “South Park had them all laughin’/ Now all my ni**as designing and we all swaggin’”.
He also addressed the spoof on a version of “Life Of The Party” that appeared on the deluxe edition of Donda, rhyming, “South Park had jokes about fishsticks/’Til this day the whole team can kiss this di*k.”
South Park parodied Ye again in 2013 in episode “The Hobbit.”
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Bobby Brown – ‘Saturday Night Live’
Image Credit: SNL YouTube Bobby Brown didn’t take too kindly to him and late ex-wife, Whitney Houston, being parodied by Tracy Morgan and Maya Rudolph on Saturday Night Live back in 2002. The skit played off of Houston’s now infamous 2002 Diane Sawyer interview.
“It was hateful,” Brown said of the SNL skit, according to Atlanta Black Star. “People do some hateful things, but you just have to bare and buckle down and be able to accept the good with the bad.”
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Bobby Brown – ‘Mad TV’
Image Credit: YouTube The New Edition member was even more offended by Mad TV‘s spoof of their relationship, as Aries Spears and Debra Wilson’s portrayal heavily mined the couple’s drug usage for material.
“They really offended me. I took a lot of their sh*t personal,” Brown said of Mad TV‘s sketches, adding that he and Whitney discussed confronting the two comedic actors.
“Me and Whitney were like that,” he confirmed. Ultimately, however, they decided against doing so. “No, no, no I won’t go there. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to take Aries Spears in the corner somewhere. Sketches are sketches, comedy is comedy and I think I realized that a long time ago that I can’t take sh*t so personal that I want to cause someone bodily harm.”
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Tyler Perry – ‘The Boondocks’
Image Credit: YouTube The Boondocks parodied several celebrities during its four season run, including Tyler Perry in Season 3 episode, “Pause.” The show found Perry being spoofed in character Winston Jerome, who created outrageous character Ma Dukes, a clear send up of Perry’s Madea. The show also depicted “Winston Jerome” as a sexual predator and gay cult leader who hides behind a religious facade.
According to co-executive producer Carl Jones, Perry was furious at the depiction. With Turner Broadcasting owning Cartoon Network/Adult Swim at the time, Perry, who had several shows on TBS, used his cachet with the network to stop the episode from re-airing.
“The episode aired and, at least the way this was told to us by the network, Tyler himself called and said, ‘You guys better not air that sh*t again.’ At the time, he had a lot of shows at TBS. We were just a little, small, Black cartoon. Tyler Perry was god.”
