- Spectator Fely Yigle was featured heavily during Chris Rock’s latest Netflix comedy special.
- The 21-year-old took to TikTok to enjoy her newfound fame — and to answer critics who thought she laughed too hard at some of Rock’s questionable jokes.
- “The negative feedback came from the fact that people just didn’t like Chris Rock,” she told Insider.
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A woman who was seen in the audience of Chris Rock’s Netflix comedy special laughed out loud and took to TikTok to celebrate her moment in the sun — and to answer her critics.
Fely Yigle, 21, who goes by @lifeof.fay on TikTok, shared a semi-viral video on Sunday in which she joked about her appearance in the “Selective Outrage” special, wearing the same purple top and barrettes she wore to the recordings. While her TikTok was a lot of fun, she now has to answer viewers who thought she laughed too hard at some of Rock’s most awkward jokes.
Yigle told Insider that she attended the event on March 4 with a group of seven friends, one of whom had received an invitation from a coordinator to fill the seats at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore. As the group sat “literally right in the front row,” it occurred to Yigle that the camera might catch a glimpse of her.
“I didn’t think it would be as bad for us as it was,” she said.
As she walked out of the theater, other audience members approached her to tell her that the camera had been panned at her several times during the live broadcast. People watching at home also noticed it. One person on Twitter joked that the cameraman was in love with her.
On TikTok, Yigel joked about cherishing her newfound fame. She’s been seen lip syncing to the popular sound bite, “So how does this work: Am I calling LA or are they calling me?”
While her TikTok was mostly met with compliments, she also received some backlash as Rock’s set sparked negative reactions on social media. In one act, the comedian responded to Will Smith slapping him at last year’s Oscars by joking that he had watched “Emancipation,” the historical thriller in which Smith plays a runaway slave, in retaliation for seeing Smith physically was mistreated.
Some saw it as a triumphant settlement of the score, while others thought Rock went too far. His special was also accused of misogyny with jokes about Meghan Markle and Jada Pinkett Smith, calling the latter a “bitch” and a “predator”.
“He traded in colorism and said Meghan Markle had won the fair-skinned lottery,” wrote columnist Elizabeth Wellington in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “His unnecessary use of the N-word made me cringe. He called Will and Jada B-words countless times. It got really nasty.”
The widespread criticism of Rock is why people on TikTok have been pressuring Yigle about her comments.
“Great acting because baby, laughing wasn’t real because that special was awful,” reads Yigle’s TikTok first response, with 1,200 votes. “But you look absolutely gorgeous!”
In follow-up videos, Yigle brushed off criticism that she “laughed too hard”. As a political science student, she said, Rock’s “politically framed jokes” can help “make the truth more palatable.” She later told Insider that while her laughter wasn’t fake, it was “maybe a little too extra” because she knew the cameras were there.
“I think more of the negative feedback came from the fact that people just didn’t like Chris Rock,” Yigle added. “So they were shocked that I laughed like that. But I was like it was a comedy show.”
Since posting on TikTok, she said people have specifically asked for her thoughts on Rock’s comments about black women.
“He didn’t talk much about black women as a whole,” Yigle told Insider. “He talked about specific – and Jada was one of the people who was involved in everything that happened.”
Finally, she said, she came to have a good laugh, and she did.
“I didn’t come to watch a presidential campaign or a debate,” she concluded on TikTok. “I came to laugh… so I didn’t take anything he said seriously.”