There was a lot of breaking character during the April 13 episode of “Saturday Night Live,” hosted by Ryan Gosling, but no one broke harder than Heidi Gardner during the now-infamous “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch. Gardner played a NewsNation anchor hosting a discussion on AI, but the event is disrupted by two audience members who look exactly like Beavis and Butt-Head, played by Gosling and Mikey Day under makeup and prosthetics.
Gardner completely lost it midway through the sketch when she turned to see Day as Butt-Head sitting behind her. She broke character and couldn’t get herself composed for nearly a minute, leading to huge audience cheers and powering the sketch to 5.6 million views on YouTube and counting.
In an interview with Vulture, Gardner revealed that she had actually seen Gosling and Day in their full prosthetic look at the episode’s dress rehearsal earlier in the night. Many viewers assumed Gardner did not see their final looks until the live taping given how much she broke on air, but she actually did. Day’s exposed gums and teeth made her break both times.
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“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,” Gardner said. “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.”
“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,” she continued. “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.”
Gardner told Vulture the “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch had been “put up at table reads and rehearsals for about five years prior to this.” She had also “coached myself for so many years to not break,” but something about seeing Gosling and Day in character made it impossible.
“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,'” Garnder said about breaking for such an extended period of time. “So many other writers and cast members came up and said, ‘Good job.’I’m like,‘What? I actually didn’t do my job.'”
“It’s really hard for me to give myself any sort of credit because I didn’t do the job,” she added. “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.”
Head over to Vulture’s website to read Gardner’s interview in its entirety. Watch the “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch below.
