Ashlee Simpson Learned to 'Say No' After Her 'SNL' Lip-Sync Blunder: 'It Was a Humbling Moment for Me'
It's been almost 20 years since Ashlee Simpson's Saturday Night Live appearance went viral after she lip-synched on live television.
Now, looking back on the viral moment, she shared how the incident affected her life.
“I’ve never talked about or said, but it’s like the other thing is, learning as a woman, when you say no or as an artist or a human or whatever, that day I said ‘I will not go on, I don’t care. I can’t speak,’” she said on the "Broad Ideas With Rachel Bilson & Olivia Allen" podcast.
At the time, the singer, 39, was a musical guest on the series — but she suffered from vocal issues that same week, causing her to lose her voice ahead of the big night.
Ashlee Simpson recalled when she had to lip-sync on 'SNL.'
“My band has never practiced this, this is not going to go well,” Simpson recalled, adding she wanted to cancel the appearance anyways. “I can’t do this.”
The mom-of-three sang "Pieces of Me," which went well, but when she belted out "Autobiography," things took a turn for the worse, and the audience knew she wasn't really singing.
Ashlee Simpson is married to Evan Ross.
“I feel like it was a humbling moment for me,” she explained. “I had the number one song, it was, like, everything was about go, like, somewhere and then it was just, like, woah. The humility of not even understanding what grown-a-- people would say about you, awful, awful things.”
The star is a mom to three kids.
The former reality star eventually learned "the power of my no" — but it didn't happen overnight.
“I think having to find at a young age that strength to be like, ‘I am good at this, and I will keep going, and I will keep fighting,’” Simpson added.
Ashlee Simpson said she's learned about saying no after the 'SNL' incident.
Simpson later returned to SNL to promote her second album.
“That was f-------- scary to do," she admitted.
“I feel like having the show at that time was nice because all the people that were my fans stuck with me and I went back on stage and I went back to it all,” she recalled. “But I think having to find – at a young age – that strength to be like, ‘No, I’m good at this. I will keep going. I will keep fighting.’”
“For me it was like a week of sulking ‘til I had to be like, ‘OK, I need to get all these steroids and be able to have my voice and get back on stage and figure this out.’ And I feel like I owed that to my fans and myself and that's what I did,” she continued. “The harder part of it for me was everyone bringing it up. I had let it go.”