Amy Adams has revealed that she turned down a sketch idea from Andy Samberg during her 2008 Saturday Night Live hosting efforts and her reason for doing so speaks volumes for the responsibility she felt towards her youngest fans.
Talking further Late Night with Seth Meyersexplained Adams that Samberg had pitched her a sketch involving a couple in a park where the man had been bitten by a spider and, as a dying wish, asked his partner for something Adams described as “the most graphic thing” she could imagine.
She kept the punchline to herself, but provided enough of the setup to make the picture clear.
“I was so aware of all the young girls watching Enchanted” she said.
“And I wouldn’t be the princess singing about that very act, you know?”
The timing made her thinking completely understandable.
Adams was the host SNL only months after Enchanted had become a hit with families and children, and the last thing she wanted was to undermine her young audience with content that could stumble across.
As she told Samberg at the time, according to his own retelling on The lonely island and Seth Meyers Podcastshe found the sketch “really funny” but felt she simply couldn’t do it
. “Little girls are so obsessed with Enchanted right now that they will find this and it will scar them,” she told him.
Samberg admitted that he hadn’t fully understood where she was coming from until a moment during filming completely changed his mind.
While shooting Hero song shortly for the same episode, a mother and young daughter approached Adams on the street.
The look on the little girl’s face when she saw the actress was enough.
“Oh, she was so right,” Samberg recalled thinking.
“It’s not even something I’ve ever thought about in our industry, you know what I mean? She actually has an obligation and a responsibility to those kids, and she took it really seriously. And I remember being really impressed by that.”
Meyers confirmed that Samberg had previously publicly praised Adams for standing her ground, both for her own image and for the children who looked up to her.
