Jennifer Lawrence Explains How She Felt About Ariana Grande's SNL Impression Of Her—And Yeah, Fair

Oscar-winning actor Jennifer Lawrence is opening up about what it was like to be the 2010s "It Girl"—and the backlash that quickly ensued.

In a recent interview with The New Yorker to promote her new movie Die My Love, Lawrence looked back on her irreverent 2010s persona that seemed to strike everyone as refreshingly irreverent at first, but soon became grating.

And one moment from the era stuck particularly brightly: singer Ariana Grande's 2016 SNL appearance in which the artist did a send-up of Lawrence as an annoying celebrity trying way too hard to seem "quirky" and "normal."

J. Law's take? Grande was "spot on" because she agrees she was "annoying."

In many way's Lawrence's trajectory was pretty standard for women in Hollywood. She rocketed seemingly overnight to the highest-paid actress in town and was suddenly everywhere and in everything.

And part of what got her there was her aggressively "regular" persona full of irreverent awkward moments.

One of the most unforgettable was in 2013 when she won her first Golden Glob and openly admitted she had absolutely no idea what to do in the press room afterward, asking the press to give her directions.

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This awkwardness ingratiated her to the public for a while, but the tide soon turned. It seems Lawrence became a bit too successful and was a bit too "normal" for a movie star.

By the time 2016 rolled around, Lawrence had won an Oscar and been nominated for two more, and her persona began to seem a lot more like shtick that was wearing thin on much of the public.

Enter Grande, who lampooned her in an SNL "Celebrity Family Feud" sketch as just that—an insincere, out of touch movie star trying way too hard to seem like an Average Joanne, complete with a spot-on impression of Lawrence's often chaotic mannerisms.

Grande lampooned many aspects of Lawrence's persona, like her tendency at the time to talk about food in interviews.

At one point, Grande says:

“I’m just, like, a snackaholic. I mean, I love Pringles. If no one’s looking, I’ll eat, like, a whole can.”

To which Kenan Thompson as Steve Harvey quipped "oh how annoyingly relatable" in a punchline that pretty much summed up the souring sentiment toward Lawrence at the time.

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Before long, Lawrence wasn't really seen much onscreen or off, as she kept a low-profile as she realized that "everyone had gotten sick of me," as she put it to Vanity Fair in 2021

Speaking to the New Yorker this month, Lawrence says she now understands why, and gets exactly why SNL and Grande portrayed her the way they did.

Describing her past self as "hyper" and "embarrassing," she told the magazine:

“I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying. I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying.”

And while, she explained, she was being her true self at the time, it was also partly put-on for a very specific reason.

"It is, or it was, my genuine personality, but it was also a defense mechanism."

"And so it was a defense mechanism, to just be, like, ‘I’m not like that! I poop my pants every day!’”

Fame is destabilizing for pretty much everyone, but especially when it happens overnight like it did for Lawrence. And Lawrence said the backlash was even more difficult because it was focused not on some actual faux pas, but just on her being herself.

She explained:

“I felt — I didn’t feel, I was, I think — rejected not for my movies, not for my politics, but for me, for my personality.”

But on social media, many people were firmly on Lawrence's side, and felt she shouldn't have to apologize for the hate that came her way.

It just goes to show that as much as the public loves a Hollywood success story, they love tearing a star apart just as much—especially if the star in question is a woman.