Heidi Gardner on breaking character during SNL Beavis sketch: I tried to prepare
Ryan Gosling hosted the April 14 episode of SNL. The entire episode was really funny and definitely one of the better ones in years. Ryan brought a special kind of energy and managed to break character and laugh at least once per live sketch. His giggles seemed genuine, too, like he was having the time of his life. He even caused different SNL cast members to lose it on several occasions.
This happened to poor Heidi Gardner in a sketch that’s gone viral. “Town Hall” featured Gardner as NewsNation host Bobbi Moore, who is interviewing Keenan Thompson’s professor character. All hell breaks loose when they see Mikey Day and Gosling playing two characters that look exactly like Beavis and Butthead, respectively. Heidi’s reaction to seeing Day as Beavis was so hilarious. She started laughing and couldn’t seem to get it under control for a good 30 seconds, leading Twitter to wonder if it was the first time she’d seen her castmate in full costume. In an interview with Vulture, Heidi was asked about her live reaction, so she explained what happened. Turns out she had seen Day-as-Beavis during dress rehearsal, but that still didn’t prevent her from laughing live on air.
Nothing could have prepared Heidi Gardner to see costar Mikey Day in full Butt-Head cosplay on Saturday Night Live — or so the star says after the moment, which resulted in her fully breaking character, went viral over the weekend. In an interview with Vulture, Gardner said the fact that she broke for nearly 30 seconds, much to the cheering studio audience’s delight, was an extra surprise for her since she had already “lost it” during the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch’s dress rehearsals earlier on Saturday.
“This makes me feel almost even worse and unprofessional,” she explained to the outlet. “When I looked and saw Mikey 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.'”
She continued, “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.”
In the sketch in question, below, Gardner plays NewsNation host Bobbi Moore, who is hosting a town hall on the AI revolution. She welcomes an expert professor (Kenan Thompson) who is immediately distracted by a member of the audience: SNL host Ryan Gosling, who looks strikingly similar to the cartoon character Beavis, of Beavis and Butt-Head, with his blue shirt and blonde pompadour. Gardner breaks when she later sees Day’s Butt-Head, with his gray shirt and exposed gums, and can’t fully face the camera as she continues laugh-gasping.
To be fair to Gardner, only some of the prosthetics made their way into the dress rehearsal of the sketch. “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 told Vulture.
Though it got a great response from the audience, which Gardner said is “so nice,” she admitted the moment gave her anxiety and she “left the stage a little bit in shock” because she felt like she didn’t do her job properly. “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,” Gardner said, adding, “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.”
Aw, I hope Heidi shows herself some grace. It’s not like she’s pulling a Jimmy Fallon and laughing like that every week. Her reaction made the entire sketch even funnier. Heck, her reaction is the thing that made “Town Hall” go viral. It’s now up there with the Cowbell sketch. Who could blame her? I would have lost it too. What I’d really like now, though, is for SNL to release the dress rehearsal footage. That must have been absolutely hilarious to witness and you know Gosling probably cracked up during that, too. Come on, NBC, show us the footage!
If you haven’t seen it yet or want to rewatch it and laugh along with Heidi, here’s the Town Hall sketch. There’s also been some really funny memes to come out of it, too:
Kinda having trouble concentrating during this trial. pic.twitter.com/samPo2mBuB
— Daniel Spenser (@DanSpenser) April 15, 2024
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