Ashlee Simpson finally reveals truth behind infamous SNL blunder

Ashlee Simpson has lifted the lid on what really happened before her trainwreck lip-synching blunder on Saturday Night Live in 2004.

Ashlee Simpson has spoken candidly about her infamous lip-synching scandal on Saturday Night Live in 2004, admitting it taught her “the power of saying no.”

“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,’” the former pop star said during her appearance on the Broad Ideas With Rachel Bilson & Olivia Allen podcast.

According to the singer, she was scheduled to appear on the variety show – which streams locally on BINGE – as a musical guest but realised that she could not perform because she had “two nodules beating against each other,” causing her to lose her voice, reports the New York Post.

Simpson’s infamous SNL gaffe. Picture: Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank

Simpson, 39, says she told the show’s execs what was happening but was pressured by the higher-ups to perform her hit song Pieces of Me anyway using a prerecorded track.

“My band has never practised this, this is not going to go well,” she recalled thinking. “I can’t do this.”

The singer did end up performing the song without incident. Yet, when she went on to perform for a second time, a glitch occurred where the studio accidentally played the vocal track over, revealing the ruse.

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Simpson spoke about it on a recent podcast.

Despite the track only playing for a few seconds, several viewers were quick to lambaste the singer.

According to Simpson, the entire ordeal taught her “the power of my no” and “the power of me saying absolutely not.”

“I feel like it was a humbling moment for me,” she continued. “I had the No. 1 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-arse people would say about you, awful, awful things.”

The experience also served as a learning experience for Simpson to “tune out” the haters.

Simpson would later return to the show in 2005, fully healed. She performed two more of her hits, Boyfriend and Catch Me When I Fall.

Earlier in the podcast, Simpson revealed that she once rejected a purity ring her father attempted to give her.

“I think [when I was] younger, too, I would come off way more rebellious than I was,” Simpson ruminated. “Because I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing that.’ ”

Simpson told viewers that she had watched how her parents treated her older sister, Jessica, and realised she didn’t want any part of it.

“I would see how my dad would be like, ‘You can’t talk to this guy.’ [Or like], ‘Here’s your ring to save yourself,’” the Hot Chick actress Simpson said, explaining that Joe Simpson, 66, tried to force a ring on her at age 12.

“I was like, ‘Oh, no, thank you. I will [not] be telling you when I am having sex,’” quipped Simpson before adding that, even without the ring, she still waited until she was 17 to have sex. “I always wanted it to be open that you don’t know what I’m doing.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.