After Ashlee Simpson Got Caught Lip-Synching on ‘SNL,’ the ‘Bullying Was Insane’
During a performance 21 years ago on Saturday Night Live, Ashlee Simpson (now Ashlee Simpson-Ross) was revealed to be lip-syncing her hit tracks. She ended up walking off the stage after doing a very odd little dance. In a recent interview with Pod Meets World, which is helmed by the original cast of Boy Meets World, Simpson revealed that at the time, the level of public scrutiny she received was off the charts.
“During that time, I mean, the bullying was insane," Simpson-Ross recalled. She highlighted the difference between then and now; at the time, print magazines dedicated weeks of coverage to her lip-sync fiasco, and she was interviewed for entertainment news segments on television. There was an extended cultural fixation, and it heavily impacted her career. She said while people aren’t any less harsh on celebs for major gaffes these days, the moments don’t last as long.
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“It’s different now. For us, we had the magazines,” Simpson-Ross said. “Now everything’s kinda more fleeting.”
This is far from the first time Simpson has spoken about the performance, which was also addressed in the Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music special. In that documentary, everyone from the music director of SNL at the time to Bowen Yang reflected on the impact of the iconic failed performance of “Autobiography.” For anyone who doesn’t remember, Simpson was supposed to sing “Autobiography” as her second song, but instead the track for “Pieces of Me,” started to play, revealing that Simpson-Ross was lip syncing her performances.
Back in 2018, Simpson-Ross told People, “the world hated me for this SNL moment I had. I was such a young girl, and the world can be a cruel place. But I learned at that time in my life to believe in my work and in my album and to get up and keep fighting and carrying on.”
In snippets of an interview with 60 Minutes from October 2004 that was first aired in 2024, Lorne Michaels said the whole ordeal — which made Simpson the most hated woman in America for a bit in 2004 — wasn’t something he was overly concerned about. “I think accidents happen. I think that’s the nature of live television,” Michaels told Lesley Stahl.
At the time, plenty of people thought Michaels had been involved in the lip-syncing decision, using it as a way to trick viewers. “Honestly,” Michaels claimed, “if I were to try and pull one over, it would be much more complicated than that.”