Lily Allen brings out Dakota Johnson as ‘Madeline’ in ‘SNL’ performance

Lily Allen brought out Dakota Johnson to play ‘Madeline’ during her Saturday Night Live performance last night (December 13).

• READ MORE: Lily Allen – ‘West End Girl’ review: a vicious, vulnerable and victorious comeback

Yesterday’s musical guest slot saw Allen – who made waves stateside with her latest record ‘West End Girl’ and has sold out the biggest North American tour of her career next year – perform one of the album’s most talked about tracks with ‘Madeline’.

Her split from the Stranger Things star David Harbour was a major source of inspiration for the songs on the record, and ‘Madeline’ sees her construct a fictional character who Allen implies had an affair with him.

She was joined on the song, in which she sings: “I can’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth / I’m not convinced that he didn’t fuck you in our house” – by Johnson, who performed the voice note out of sight of the audience before being revealed at the end of the track.

DAKOTA JOHNSON YOU ARE EVERYTHING TO ME ILYSM AND LILY ALLEN YOU ARE AMAZING #SNL @nbcsnl pic.twitter.com/sYwpSCrM9p

— rami ⸆⸉ EUPHORIA ~ THE MOMENT ~ THE DRAMA (@isadoraxkate) December 14, 2025

Following the album’s release, a woman named Natalie Tippett came forward claiming to be the woman who was having an affair with Harbour, telling the Mail on Sunday: “Of course I’ve heard the song. But I have a family and things to protect. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I understand this is going on. It’s a little bit scary for me.”

Despite her claims, Allen later insisted in an interview with The Sunday Times that the song ‘Madeline’ is a fictional character who is a “construct of others”.

‘West End Girl’ was given a four-star review from NME, who praised ‘Madeline’ as “a dizzying cocktail of uncertainty, fury and empathy”. It also landed at number 13 on NME‘s 50 Best Albums of 2025. “On this raw nerve of a divorce album, she sifts through the wreckage over suitably muted two-step, flamenco and dancehall beats,” we wrote of the record.

The post Lily Allen brings out Dakota Johnson as ‘Madeline’ in ‘SNL’ performance appeared first on NME.