It seems that playing a polarizing figure taught Aidy Bryant an ugly truth about people on both sides of the political spectrum.
The “Saturday Night Live” cast member told Shondaland last week that she decided to leave Twitter after she was “inundated” with harsh tweets every time she’d play former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The thing that always blew me away was that when I would play [Sanders] on the show, I would be inundated with tweets saying I was a fat, ugly pig who didn’t have the right to play someone as ‘brave and smart’ as Sarah Huckabee Sanders,” Bryant said. “The other half were tweeting at me saying I was too ‘beautiful and good’ to play someone as ‘vile and fat’ as Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”
Bryant said the experiences were “brutal,” especially since she found the shared fat-shaming unacceptable.
“It made me sad on both sides that she was being reduced to her looks, and so was I. It wasn’t good for any reason,” Bryant said.
Though the “Shrill” star said she occasionally gets a few cruel messages on the social media platform of her choice — Instagram — she also admits that she hasn’t been cyberbullied as severely as other outspoken women she knows.
“I certainly haven’t had the targeted harassment that Lindy West or Leslie Jones had,” she told the website. “These are people who I know and love. When you see stuff like that, it’s pretty revolting.”
To read Bryant’s entire interview, head over to Shondaland.