They were just there to learn about AI. What cartoon resemblance are you talking about? Such is the premise of SNL’s nitrous oxide of a sketch from the April 13 episode, “Beavis and Butt-Head,” which finds two town-hall attendees befuddled about their apparent similarities to a certain pair of Gen-X slackers. At first, the absurdity is somewhat contained: The Beavis doppelgänger (host Ryan Gosling) is asked to change seats at the interviewee’s request due to his distracting blond pompadour. But when the Butt-Headian “man with the gray shirt and exposed gums” (Mikey Day) replaces him, it’s the point of no return for Heidi Gardner’s NewsNation host. She breaks in spectacularly charming fashion at the sight of Day’s costuming — adding an easy 30 seconds to the sketch’s run time — alternating between a loss of words and breaths. Then, one by one, so does everyone else. Not since Debbie Downer’s “It’s official, I can’t have children” have we seen such collective laughter.
Gardner, who has been an SNL cast member since 2017, can’t recall another time when she has come close to such a sensation while on the show. In fact, “Beavis and Butt-Head” had been incubating in the studio for the majority of her time as a repertory player. “I’m still trying to figure out,” she explains, “what exactly happened to me.”
You’re someone who rarely breaks, which made this moment all the more endearing for viewers. To what do you credit your previous immunity?
I had a sketch one time when I was performing at the Groundlings. One of my castmates and I had a sketch where, from the first time we did it, we broke and couldn’t contain ourselves. We kept doing it at nearly every performance. Our director finally sat us down and said, “Listen, guys, I can tell you’re having fun out there, but the audience doesn’t even know what’s going on in the sketch.” We got a stern talking-to, and I understood why. I decided after that, I need to be professional. That cured my breaking, which happened before I got to SNL. It had been coached into me that I couldn’t break, so I just didn’t, really, after that. It was long before Lorne Michaels.
Walk me through the evolution of this sketch. Was this something that was sitting dormant for a while and waiting for the right host, or were the writers specifically inspired by Ryan Gosling last week?
It was a sketch that had been put up at table reads and rehearsals for about five years prior to this. Previously, I was in the sketch but as an audience member. I can’t remember the other castings of it. It never made it to a dress rehearsal.
Every so often, because of timing or the stage it’s in, a sketch might be cut on a Friday night as opposed to a Saturday. That’s what happened the time before. I had never seen the costumes. It was a sketch that Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell kept on pitching, like, “Before the end of our time here, we have to do the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch.” It was their white whale; they really wanted to do it. Knowing Ryan is always so down for fun and playful things, my guess is they thought he would be into it.
Was there a sense during rehearsals that this sketch could turn nuclear?
The rehearsals were fun, for sure, but I wasn’t getting the sense that this would be a nuclear moment for me. We were still working out the particular blocking of it. Kenan Thompson and I had to be in profile with each other looking toward cameras, and even in the rehearsals, I would look back to tell both guys to move seats but I would look back toward the camera more than their faces. Streeter told me it was weird if I was looking at the camera, so I had to make sure I was looking at them and acknowledging them a little more when they’re talking to me. There was a lot of working out the blocking that took away from how funny the sketch was actually going to be. I remember thinking, Oh, this is way more technical than I thought. Ryan was already giggling at this point, but yeah, I didn’t get a total sense of what it was going to be.
When did you realize its total potential?
The dress rehearsal. They were in costume for the earlier rehearsals on Saturday with their wigs and outfits but not the prosthetics. It was funny to look back and see Ryan and know he was nodding along to what I was talking about. I could hear people giggle. But yes, 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.
Oh, that’s great, so this wasn’t a Stefon-esque moment sprung to you in the live show.
This makes me feel almost even worse and unprofessional. 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. 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.
When you looked back at Mikey’s Butt-Head, your reaction was such genuine shock and awe. Did any changes happen after the dress rehearsal that served as contributing factors?
Mikey does seem to turn his head just a little bit and bug out his eyes. It’s like he’s doing a subtle acknowledgment. That was new. Maybe the fact I was trying to give myself pep talks contributed to it. Mikey and I sit next to each other during table reads, and he makes me laugh a lot. It’s easy for us to mess with each other. Something in the way he moved on live television felt like when someone messes with you to make you laugh.
The makeup department did such a good job with the gums and hair. He looks so much like Butt-Head, but there’s also this movie when I was a kid called Warriors of Virtue. There were kangaroo samurai creatures. Me and my friends thought that movie was so funny when I was younger, so at a certain point, looking at Mikey and Ryan, it was like staring right into the Warriors of Virtue. There was clearly a lot going on for me.
How did it feel when the audience applauded your breaking? Did you think that was nice?
It was so nice. Time moves so fast or so slow when you’re off the rails with something on the show. I was thinking to myself, You need to recover from this. I had coached myself for so many years to not break. Being a perpetual people-pleaser rule follower, it was nice that I broke the rules — unintentionally, of course. I can’t help what I saw, but people were okay with it. Not only okay with it but encouraged it. That’s all the feedback I’ve gotten since.
I left the stage a little bit in shock. Then the anxiety set in and I was like, Oh my God, was that okay? I had some friends in my dressing room, and they were like, “Of course, it was okay.” So many other writers and cast members came up and said, “Good job.” I’m like, What? I actually didn’t do my job.
I need to know how all those extras somehow maintained their cool.
I know. I feel like they’re the No. 1 heroes there. They must have had the same coaching at some point as I did. I hope all of them get a moment where they can completely lose it in a sketch and be supported after.
Would you say you enhanced the sketch and made it funnier by breaking?
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. 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.
So did you watch Beavis and Butt-Head as a teenager?
I absolutely watched Beavis and Butt-Head and loved it. I saw the movie on opening weekend. What’s crazy is I just looked back at my camera roll — a close friend gave me a Butt-Head ornament for Christmas that their mom had. My dressing room is such a collection of what my teenage bedroom would’ve been. There’s all of this nostalgia and posters everywhere. I realized my dressing room was the perfect place for it, so I have it hanging right in front of my mirror. I’ve been seeing Butt-Head every day for four months. Something’s been manifesting this moment.
