Posted in: NBC, Peacock, TV, YouTube | Tagged: Heidi Gardner, nbc, Ryan Gossling, saturday night live, snl

SNL: Heidi Gardner on "Beavis and Butt-Head," Breaking Big & More

SNL star Heidi Gardner offers some insights into the "Beavis and Butt-Head" sketch, including how it went during dress rehearsal and more.

It was the Saturday Night Live sketch that folks are still talking about. "Beavis and Butt-Head" – otherwise known as "The Sketch That Broke Heidi Gardner" – and how could she not? Set during a NewsNation livestream event on AI involving Gardner's interviewer Bobbi Moore and Kenan Thompson's expert professor, things take a sharp left turn, hit the gas peddle, and never look back. Why? Because host Ryan Gosling and SNL's Mikey Day made for an excellent Beavis and Butt-Head – and that's why it works. Sure, the absurdity of the premise gets you halfway there – but it is Gosling's & Day's ability to seem generally sincere when they say they've never heard of the animated characters that bring it home. But as great as they were, the big reason why the sketch is still getting attention is all about Gardner's reaction to seeing Day – a break that meant so much more because Gardner isn't known for breaking – think of her more as the "Anti-Jimmy Fallon." Now, Gardner is offering some insights into the sketch, the audience's & viewers' reactions to it, and much more.

"This makes me feel almost even worse and unprofessional. When I looked and saw Mikey [Day] in the dress rehearsal, I lost it. I was shocked. I'm thinking about it right now and laughing. I recovered and tried to tell myself in between dress and the live show, 'You can't laugh like that again,'" Gardner revealed to Vulture, adding that she thought she would be prepared for it not that the "shock" was gotten out of the way during dress rehearsal. "I was trying to imagine seeing him in my head, so I was prepared for it, but I just couldn't prepare for what I saw. I really tried. I even saw Mikey out of the corner of my eye seconds before I went live. I saw the red shorts. I knew I couldn't look over there again. Mikey even told me later that he was bending down and hiding himself so I wouldn't see him."

While she had a chance to preview some of what Day and the show's effects team had in store for the sketch, it wasn't until the sketch itself hit that Gardner got a better appreciation for Day's Butt-Head. "The dress rehearsal was when the prosthetics made their debut — the noses and the mouths. I didn't know about Mikey's exposed gums and teeth," she explained. But if there's one thing that SNL EP Lorne Michaels has had a love/hate relationship with over the past nearly 50 seasons is cast members breaking – arguing that it takes the viewers out of the reality of the sketch.

While she appreciated the reaction from the audience, Gardner admits that she "left the stage a little bit in shock" when the sketch ended – worried that she hadn't done right by the sketch and others in the sketch. "It's really hard for me to give myself any sort of credit because I didn't do the job. I hope, for those guys and their portrayals of Beavis and Butt-Head, that it helped how shocked I was by how funny they were," she explained. "And I hope it helps people think of the sketch. I'll never be able to shake looking over my shoulder and seeing what I saw. That's really special."

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