Horatio Sanz accuser calls out SNL cast for lack of support after teen sex assault allegations
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The woman who sued Horatio Sanz for sexual assault when she was a minor is criticizing his former Saturday Night Live costars for not supporting her while she sought legal action against him.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe, alleged in an August 2021 lawsuit that Sanz groomed and sexually assaulted her at multiple SNL after-parties when she was 17 years old. During one event in May 2002, she alleged that Sanz groped her "in full view of party onlookers, continuing the assault even as she implored him to stop" and that "the entire SNL cast watched" and "laughed."
"My control top pantyhose did more to keep me safe than any of those people that I idolized," Doe said in a chapter from Maureen Ryan's book, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, an excerpt of which was published by The Hollywood Reporter on Monday.
Doe's interview with Ryan occurred in "early 2022." That August, Doe filed a motion to include SNL alums Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, and boss Lorne Michaels in the lawsuit against Sanz and NBC Universal, alleging that they helped enable the sexual abuse she faced as a teenager. Both sides agreed to dismiss the case in November.
Art Streiber/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Horatio Sanz
Doe went on to say that she didn't feel like the cast of the late-night comedy had her back during the suit. She referenced the statement that Sex and the City stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis published following allegations of sexual assault against Chris Noth and how it acknowledged "that it's hard for the survivor to come forward and we support the survivor."
"None of the people who were at SNL at the time have had one word to say," Doe said. "Not one person has said, 'Oh, I remember that — that was wrong.'"
Earlier in the excerpt, Doe — who regularly attended the show's after-parties when she was between the ages of 15 and 17 — said that not only did the other cast members not intervene on her behalf, but that she believed they never raised the issue to higher-ups either.
"I just know that as an adult now in her thirties, if I saw a colleague fingering or getting a minor drunk, getting a fan drunk, and I saw that clearly unbalanced power dynamic. Sanz was clearly pursuing me, physically pursuing me across years of these parties," she said. "If I saw my colleague doing that with a teenage fan, I would absolutely intervene or I would go up the chain of command and I would want something to be done. I would want it to be handled. And I don't think that that happened."
"And I don't know if that was because no one said anything at all," she continued. "And I don't know if that's because, maybe, Saturday Night Live selects employees who happen to be funny and also happen to be the type of people that aren't going to say anything when bad things happen to people — they're just going to keep their mouth closed. I don't know if Lorne just has such a stronghold on everyone."
Doe explained that she remained in contact with Sanz for a while following the alleged assault, but over time came to believe that their relationship was "emotionally abusive." She also recalled a separate instance in which she attended one of the show's after-after parties with Sanz before falling asleep in a cab and allegedly waking to "Sanz's vigorous efforts to remove her pants."
"He steered me into thinking that everything that happened — when he tried to rape me in the cab after that party — was my fault," she alleged, adding that, as a result, Doe "forgot about that fifteen-year-old girl that used to have confidence."
Now, Doe explained that she's sharing her story in order to hold those involved accountable. "When people are like, 'Don't you just want all this to go away?' I'm like, 'This has been my life,'" she said. "I would rather be involved in this lawsuit than let them go on being these mega-successful people who are not held accountable to anyone at all."
EW has reached out to Saturday Night Live representatives and Sanz's legal team, who did not immediately respond.
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