As anyone who has visited the interwebs in the last three weeks knows, Britney Spears' memoir The Woman in Me was released on October 24, and bombs dropped in the book have been rapidly making the rounds across social media.
SNL leaned into the trend and ran with it last week with a sketch featuring various cast members as famous people auditioning to narrate the book. Of course, that role ultimately went to Michelle Williams. Fo' shiz.
While the sketch featured the portrayed celebrities reading actual excerpts from Spears' tell-all, one quote that made the segment was not from the book at all. In fact, it came directly from a tweet that went viral on October 16 from user @thehalfbloodlad (Brian), who used a Sex and the City line as a fake quote at the height of the media frenzy surrounding released excerpts.
The tweet read:
" 'Okay, I'm ready, put it in' I said and he replied: It is already in."
"My world collapsed."
"—Britney Spears in new excerpt from her book #TheWomanInMe out October 24th."
With the exception of this joke and one Jada Pinkett Smith line, the cast read real excerpts from the memoir.
You can watch below.
The Woman in Me: Auditions - SNLyoutu.be
So this begged the question: Did the writers think this was an actual excerpt from the book, or did they rip off the joke? Or both?
People online weighed in, claiming SNL stole the joke and owed the original poster an apology and some recognition.
Brian told HuffPost he simply posted the SATC line as a joke and was in disbelief over the attention it garnered.
“My tweet comes from a very well known ‘Sex and the City’ Samantha joke."
“You can google it. It was simply a fan joke and I can’t believe it’s been blown out of proportion like this."
"Britney is a huge ‘SATC’ fan and I’m sure she got the reference immediately, but SNL using it is just weird. That’s all I have to say.”
NBC has yet to comment.
