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The Novelty of a Natural Smile

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The Novelty of a Natural Smile

“I love your teeth. You’re from England, right?” Charlotte Le Bon asks her co-star Aimee Lou Wood in an early episode of this season of “The White Lotus.”

Ms. Wood’s smile is broad, beautiful and something of a novelty these days — both among her castmates and in a broader sea of actors with straight, evenly spaced teeth having been apparently willed into submission by orthodontics or cosmetic modification.

The line, which Ms. Le Bon improvised, turned out to be prescient.

Online, viewers of the show have also begun praising Ms. Wood, who is indeed from England, for choosing to keep her natural smile. The praise has also prompted a question: When did everyone’s teeth get so perfect?

Emma Dickson, 30, said seeing Ms. Wood onscreen felt “comforting.”

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Like Ms. Wood, Ms. Dickson has a gap between her front teeth. As an actor and medical aesthetician, Ms. Dickson, who lives in Chicago, said she was all too familiar with the pressure to have flawless pearly whites. She described the style of veneers that are so ubiquitous in Hollywood as the “copy-and-paste smile,” and said she was saddened when celebrities with teeth resembling her own appeared to correct them.

“I feel like in the beginning of the ‘Real Housewives’ franchise and ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ there was this fascination with the most bleached tooth you could have,” said Sarah Hahn, a prosthodontist in Fremont, Calif., who has carved out a niche for herself on TikTok analyzing celebrity smiles. “It became more and more prevalent. So many people were doing it.”

“You could name off a million celebrities,” she added, “and they were all getting veneers.”

Over time, as the look became more widespread among celebrities, everyday people began to take a harsher look at their own smiles.

Joyce Kahng, a cosmetic dentist from Costa Mesa, Calif., said she saw an uptick in patient interest in veneers after 2020 thanks to the “Zoom effect.”

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“People were constantly looking at themselves and starting to nitpick themselves,” she said. Wanting perfect-looking teeth is a very American — though not exclusively — aesthetic ethos, she said.

“People expect celebrities to all get their teeth done at this point,” Dr. Kahng continued. “It started with celebrities. Then it went on to influencers. And influencers are a tad bit closer to just regular everyday people. Once influencers started getting them, everyone started getting them.”

Still, not everyone finds a gleaming row of straight, bleach-white teeth aspirational. As people train their eyes to spot celebrity veneers, a small backlash has started to brew. Some derisively call the too-perfect teeth “Chiclets” and yearn for an older era of television and filmmaking when actors didn’t so closely resemble one another. Even those who want veneers may ask for ones that don’t look too perfect.

“American TV now is becoming visually very homogenous,” said Sue-Ann Jarrett, who is 33 and lives in Brooklyn. “I feel like a lot of people are just looking very similar.”

Shedika Williams, who lives in Brooklyn, said Ms. Wood’s teeth made her feel a twinge of regret about getting braces and altering her own smile.

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“I watch a lot of TikTok videos of creators doing before-and-afters, and it makes me sad because I always think the before picture looks way better,” said Ms. Williams, 27. “It just made them look more unique, and their teeth fit them.”

In her videos, which she calls “veneer checks,” Dr. Hahn explains what is going on in celebrities’ mouths in technical terms, often using images spanning multiple years to show changes.

A former professor, she tries to keep her videos positive and educational, she said, hoping to help people understand what dental work their favorite stars might have had rather than to criticize the quality of the work itself.

Dr. Kahng, who has also made celebrity dentistry content for TikTok, took a similar approach to some of her videos, but said they sometimes prompt criticism.

“People associate teeth with socioeconomic level,” Dr. Kahng said. Last year, JoJo Siwa, for instance, admitted to paying $50,000 for her new set of teeth.

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Dr. Kahng has since stopped making videos analyzing celebrity’s teeth.

“If you pick apart someone’s teeth and it never really bothered them and you start conversations about them, then people start to dislike themselves when it really wasn’t a problem to begin with,” she said.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ms. Wood addressed the sudden fascination with her teeth.

“These people live in Holly­wood,” she said of her castmates. “I live in my little flat in South East London, and I’m so British in my sensibility that I wasn’t sure how to handle being around so many people who are so front-footed and confident. All I ever do is take the piss out of myself.”

The way “White Lotus” fans are talking about her teeth, she added, “that I don’t have veneers or Botox — it feels a bit rebellious.”

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Ms. Dickson, the medical aesthetician from Chicago, said she was also slightly uncomfortable with the way some people have lavished praise on Ms. Wood’s smile.

“There is something slightly unique about her, but in every other way she fits the exact beauty standard that Hollywood has loved forever,” Ms. Dickson said. And perhaps a way to make normal teeth more, well, normal again would be not to comment on them, she suggested.

“Even for myself, when people are like, ‘Oh my God, they love your gap!’” Ms. Dickson said. “It’s always just kind of like, ‘Thank you — why are we talking about this?’”

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‘Wait Wait’ for April 18. 2026: With Not My Job guest Phil Pritchard

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‘Wait Wait’ for April 18. 2026: With Not My Job guest Phil Pritchard

Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and guest scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Phil Pritchard and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Adam Burke, and Dulcé Sloan. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.

Who’s Alzo This Time

The Don Vs The Poppa; World’s Worst Doctor; Should We Eat That?

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Panel Questions

Big Cheese News!

Bluff The Listener

Our panelists tell three stories about someone missing a huge opportunity in the news, only one of which is true.

Not My Job: Phil Pritchard, the NHL’s Keeper of the Stanley Cup, answers three questions about the other NHL, National Historic Landmarks

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Peter talks to Phil Pritchard, the NHL’s Keeper of the Stanley Cup. Phil plays our game called, “Let’s Go Visit The NHL” Three questions about National Historic Landmarks.

Panel Questions

The Trump Dump and Air Traffic Control Becomes Animal Control

Limericks

Alzo Slade reads three news-related limericks: Spice Up Your Spring Cleaning; A Fizzy Meaty Drink; The Right Way to Eat Peeps.

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Lightning Fill In The Blank

All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else

Predictions

Our panelists predict the next big AirBnB story in the news

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Paul W. Downs

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Paul W. Downs

Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.

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In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.

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“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”

And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?

“It would be the Americana, obviously.”

Here’s how he’d spend a perfect day in L.A.

10 a.m.: A late rise and a li’l barista

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I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.

Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.

I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.

11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone

We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.

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11:45 a.m.: The family business

We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.

People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.

1:30 pm.: Baguettes and books

We’re driving to Larchmont and we’re getting a sandwich at Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. I’m doing prosciutto-mozzarella-basil on a baguette.

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Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.

2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party

We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.

6:00 p.m.: Family dinner

Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.

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8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day

After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.

We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.

Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.

10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow

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And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.

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Sitting in a jail cell, alone and hopeless, a man’s life is suddenly changed

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Sitting in a jail cell, alone and hopeless, a man’s life is suddenly changed

Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate’s unexpected words of comfort changed his life.

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When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.

 ”I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions,” Jay said.

One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off.

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“The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it,” Jay remembered. “And I didn’t get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.”

At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in.

“I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it.”

Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry.

“But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, ‘Hey, is this your first time?’”

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The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door.

“I collected myself a little bit, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”

Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped going to church years before. In that moment, though, he knew he needed support. He said yes, and listened as the man began to pray.

“I wish I could tell you that I remember the [exact] words that he said to me, but what I remember is that his words landed with me, and instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope,” Jay said.

The interaction happened nearly ten years ago, but it was a pivotal moment in Jay’s life, and one he thinks about all the time.

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“[Now], I have a good job. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a life. But I have a life because somebody who was in the same situation I was in had the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind.”

Jay says that he wishes he could meet that man again and express his appreciation.

“[I would] shake that guy’s hand, give him a hug, and tell him what his small gesture meant for me, how he changed the course of my life.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.

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