Scarlett Johansson mocks Katie Britt’s SOTU rebuttal on ‘SNL’

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Sitting in front of a mock kitchen, decorated in shades of beige, Scarlett Johansson made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend to roast Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s rebuttal to U.S. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night.

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“My name is Katie Britt and I have the honour of serving the great people of Alabama,” Johansson’s Britt said. “But tonight I’ll be auditioning for the part of ‘Scary Mom.’ I’ll be performing an original monologue called ‘This Country is Hell.’”

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Johansson’s Britt continued, “You see, I’m not just a senator, I’m a wife, a mother and the craziest bitch in the Target parking lot, worried about the future of our children. And this is why I’ve invited you into this strange empty kitchen because Republicans want me to appeal to women voters, and women love kitchens.”

Britt’s rebuttal, in which she called the American dream a “nightmare,” drew criticism from both sides of the aisle last week for her “overacting,” with conservative commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin tweeting, “Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person. I do not understand the decision to put her in a *KITCHEN* for one of the most important speeches she’s ever given.”

“This speech is not what we need,” added Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA. “Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking like she’s hosting a cooking show.”

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Speaking to a Business Insider reporter, a Republican Hill staffer said: “She really thinks she’s killing it. But it’s comical. Like SNL quality.”

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On X, conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey summed up Britt’s prime-time appearance by writing: “…the delivery was parody-level terrible.”

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A source close to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told the Daily Beast: “Her performance was the stuff of nightmares.”

The overly dramatic presentation from the 42-year-old freshman senator was lambasted as it was compared to other high-profile Republican rebuttal flops, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 2009 appearance, which was panned after he kicked off by wishing viewers a happy Mardi Gras, an instance when Sen. Marco Rubio sipped bottled water during his 2013 rebuttal and Rep. Michele Bachmann, who delivered a response in 2011 while looking off camera.

In a Truth Social post, Trump, who relentlessly mocked Biden’s speech Thursday night, praised Britt, calling her “compassionate and caring” and writing, “Katie Britt was a GREAT contrast to an Angry, and obviously very Disturbed, ‘President.’”

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But Griffin said the kitchen setting was a mistake. “To put her in a kitchen, not in front of a podium or in the Senate chamber, where she was elected after winning a hard-fought race, I think fell very flat,” she said in an interview with CNN.

The first-term senator also was accused of fabricating an element of her rebuttal in which she recounted a young woman’s sexual abuse to attack Biden’s border policies.

Various media outlets that fact-checked Britt’s speech with independent journalist Jonathan Katz revealing in a TikTok that the rapes did not happen during the Biden administration or in the United States.

Britt spokesman Sean Ross confirmed to The Associated Press that the senator was speaking about the account of a young Mexican woman who told of being repeatedly raped in Mexico from 2004 to 2008 — when Republican George W. Bush was the U.S. president — but said her example still confirmed the “disgusting, brutal trafficking by the cartels.”

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The freshman politician called Biden a “dithering and diminished leader” and warned that the “commander-in-chief is not in command.”

In her portrayal, Johansson continued to spoof Britt’s over-the-top delivery to the crowd’s delight. “I’m not performing. I’m not. I’m not,” she said. “Biden’s the one who is destroying our country. Just ask yourself — are you better off today than you were four years ago, back in the good old days of 2020, the year that nothing bad happened?”

On social media, the Oscar nominee’s Britt was an immediate hit with clips of her skit trending Sunday morning.

“She killed it,” one person hailed on Reddit, with another adding, “Every time I thought I was done laughing she would switch it up again into a diff psycho voice … had me rolling.”

— With files from the Associated Press and Washington Post

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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