The OG Doña Florinda Reacts to Bad Bunny’s ‘Chavo del 8’ Homage on ‘SNL’
Credit: NBC
One of the stars of the original El Chavo del 8 series is responding to Bad Bunny’s tribute on Saturday Night Live. Florinda Meza, who played Doña Florinda, had nothing but nice things to say about the homage.
When Bad Bunny hosted SNL last weekend, he brought plenty of Latinidad to the program. Towards the end of the episode, he paid homage to the beloved Mexican series El Chavo del 8 with Marcello Hernández. The show was created in the seventies by the late Roberto Gómez Bolaños, who was also known as Chespirito.
In the skit, Bad Bunny portrayed Quico and Hernández played the titular character. The cast was rounded out by Sarah Sherman as La Chilindrina, Chloe Fineman as Doña Florinda, Andrew Dismukes as Don Ramon, Keenan Thompson as El Señor Barriga, and Jon Hamm as Profesor Jirafales.
Earlier this week, there was a false post on X attributed to Meza that criticized Bad Bunny’s performance. She took a moment to set the record straight.
“I haven’t posted anything on my X account since June 4 of this year,” Meza wrote in a post on Instagram. “NOTHING. Any post attributed to me on this platform about this tribute to Bad Bunny is fake. If you think this only happens to celebrities, let me tell you that it can happen to anyone. That’s why, now more than ever, we must be alert. And as an audience, we must only pay attention to verified information.”
From there, Meza went on to say her true thoughts about the El Chavo del 8 homage on SNL. She was very complimentary of Bad Bunny’s portrayal while also happy to see Chespirito’s work revisited. “I love that they’re paying tribute to Roberto’s legacy,” she added. “I liked [the whole cast], but Bad Bunny’s performance was masterful. There’s a lot of love there, and it shows. I am grateful to Saturday Night Live, but above all, to Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio ‘Bad Bunny’ for this tribute.”
Meza also had flashbacks to playing Doña Florinda. Fineman’s version of the character was about to kiss Hamm’s Profesor Jirafales before Bad Bunny got between them. “Another thing I loved about this sketch was seeing Professor Jirafales again and being on the verge of witnessing that long-awaited kiss…Oh! It was just a dream because Bad Bunny stopped him in time,” she wrote. “We’ll keep holding on to that dream forever.”