Remember what Ryan Gosling did to KC’s Heidi Gardner last time he hosted ‘SNL’?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Gosling played Beavis, prompting Gardner to break character and laugh.
- The SNL skit aired in April 2024 and has about 27 million YouTube views.
- Gardner called it a “nuclear” moment; dress rehearsal hadn’t warned her.
Ryan Gosling will host “Saturday Night Live” for a fourth time on Saturday. The last time he hosted, in April 2024, he created a moment that still lives in infamy for Heidi Gardner fans.
Variety dubbed it “infamous.”
Gosling starred in a skit with Kansas City native Gardner and her castmates Kenan Thompson and Mikey Day. It went viral, with millions watching it on YouTube for days after it aired — it has 27 million YouTube views as of this week.
Gardner left the show at the end of last season and as people reflected on her eight seasons on the show, the sketch was named often as one of her most memorable.
“I’m still trying to figure out what exactly happened to me,” she told Vulture soon after it aired.
So let’s step into the way-back machine.
Put yourself into a “Beavis and Butt-head” frame of mind.
In the skit, Gardner played a NewsNation anchor interviewing a technology professor (Thompson) about artificial intelligence in front of a town hall audience.
Thompson, though, was distracted when he saw the man sitting behind her who looked like one half of the famous MTV slacker duo. It was Gosling wearing Beavis’ signature blond pompadour.
Gardner started laughing when she turned and saw Gosling — now starring in the new movie “Project Hail Mary” — in the wig, which sent howls through the audience as she tried to stay in character.
She couldn’t pull it together, especially after Day slipped into Gosling’s chair done up with Butt-Head’s trademark exposed gums and teeth.
Vulture described: “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.”
Gardner, who had always thought it was unprofessional to break character, told Vulture the sketch had been in the works for five years but never made it to a dress rehearsal even though Day and writer/comedian Streeter Seidell kept pitching it.
”It was their white whale; they really wanted to do it,” she said. “Knowing Ryan is always so down for fun and playful things, my guess is they thought he would be into it.”
She said even dress rehearsal didn’t warn her “that this would be a nuclear moment for me,” partly because she was focused on camera angles and not necessarily how funny it was going to be.
“I left the stage a little bit in shock. Then the anxiety set in and I was like, ‘Oh my God, was that okay?’” she told Vulture.
“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 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.”
The bit is still pinned on her Gardener’s Instagram, where she wrote: “beavis & butthead 4 eva.”
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