Natalie Portman's SNL Rap Might Just Be A Parody Of An Eazy-E Track
Remember when, in 2006, Natalie Portman showed up on "Saturday Night Live" alongside Andy Samberg in a Viking costume and revealed that she got through Harvard thanks to illicit substances and that she never wanted to be a role model? Yeah, so do we. Turns out, there's a little more to that digital short than you might think.
If you're more familiar with late-night sketch comedy shows than Eazy-E, that probably makes sense, considering that there's likely not a ton of overlap there besides Samberg and his Lonely Island cohorts Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. Eazy-E's song "No More ?'s," though, is pretty obviously the inspiration for "Natalie's Rap," which aired on "SNL" as a digital short and also appeared on The Lonely Island's debut album "Incredibad."
Both songs open with an interviewer thanking the subject, whether it's Eazy-E or Oscar winner Natalie Portman, for being with them that day before Eazy-E or Portman detail just how hardcore they really are. Every now and then, the shocked interviewer interjects, only for the subject to just keep extolling their virtues, or lack thereof. It's pretty clear that Samberg, Taccone, and Schaffer were inspired by "No More ?'s," which honestly just makes "Natalie's Rap" even cooler.
How Natalie's Rap came into the world
So why did The Lonely Island ask diminutive Harvard graduate Natalie Portman to yell that all the kids looking up to her can "s*** her d***?" According to Portman, "It was really fun to do. It actually came out of conversations with The Lonely Island guys... I said to them, I really love rap, kind of hardcore rap, and they were so surprised by that that they were like 'Okay, we're gonna do something with this.'"
Portman went on to say that she often felt pigeonholed by her public image as a prim, proper, studious actress: "Oh, she's the smart, serious one. Like they put me in this box or whatever [...] I could be both things. I could be more than one thing. It was fun to kind of get to challenge that with the rap, which also, you know, you can find the most humor in breaking expectations."
This is, frankly, a pretty deep explanation for a video where Portman says that she'll "sit right down on your face and take a s***" and "kill your f***ing dog," but all in all, it's nice that she got to play around with how she's perceived. Maybe it paid off, and there's a specific subset of fans who think that she'll break a chair over an interviewer's head when she's fed up.
Years later, Portman returned for another round
In a 2018 episode of "SNL" that brings back Natalie Portman's trash-talking alter-ego, though she assures the interviewer that she's "matured a lot," Portman slides right back into her old habits with "Natalie's Rap 2.0," donning her same black hoodie and picking up where she left off. According to this new, mature Portman, Tide Pods make up the majority of her diet, and her hobbies include blacking out and "going motherf***ing 'Black Swan.'"
Things really get weird, though, when she's asked if she's "seen the new 'Star Wars'" movies and the interviewer insults the prequels. Holding a random man at gunpoint while she's in full Queen Amidala makeup and costume, she demands that he "say something good about the prequels" and, most egregiously, Jar Jar Binks.
It's always a good time when a celebrity is willing to lampoon their own image, and Portman has now done it not once, but twice. More crucially, though, these two videos have provided us with the most enduring pop culture mystery of our time: why is Andy Samberg in a Viking costume in both of them?