In a recent essay she wrote for Variety magazine, Mayim Bialik reflected on the 1994 “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which her character Blossom of the titular 90s show was parodied with a large prosthetic nose.
In the essay, Bialik wrote about receiving targeted criticism for her “undeniably Jewish” nose as a young actor in Hollywood. Bialik was just 14 when Blossom premiered and, as she writes in her essay, an early critic of the show “said that my features did not seem to match one another. I was essentially being described as a Frankenstein of a teenager.”
When the SNL parody aired in 1994, Bialik writes that “it struck me as odd. And it confused me. No one else on the show was parodied for their features.” Given the popularity of SNL, Bialik writes that she knew all her friends would see the sketch and felt “ashamed.”
It was only recently, as denouncements of “Jewface” surfaced amid Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic-laden portrayal of Leonard Bernstein, that Bialik thought to revisit her own unsettling parody years ago.
