‘SNL’ Star Heidi Gardner Feels Terrible She Broke Character During ‘Beavis And Butt-Head’ Skit

Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live ” fans got to witness something as rare as Daria Morgendorffer smiling when longtime cast member Heidi Gardner broke character during a now-beloved “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch .

Yet for Gardner, it was no laughing matter.

“I had coached myself for so many years to not break,” Gardner told Vulture in an interview published Monday.

Gardner, who has been on the show since 2017, takes pride in her ability to maintain a straight face even during the most ridiculous of scenarios, so when she left the stage after the sketch aired, she said she had a sinking feeling.

“I left the stage a little bit in shock,” the comedian said. “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.’”

In the sketch, Gardner plays a reporter hosting a town hall discussion about artificial intelligence with an MIT professor (Kenan Thompson). During their very dry conversation, Thompson’s character keeps getting distracted by a man with a “blonde pompadour” sitting behind Gardner who looks exactly like the slacker Gen X cartoon character Beavis (played here by Ryan Gosling) from MTV’s “Beavis and Butt-Head.”

After a while, Gardner asks the Beavis lookalike to move, since his mere presence is derailing their serious conversation. He moves and Thompson’s character gets back on topic. But when the camera pans back to Gardner, there’s now a man who looks exactly like Beavis’ best friend, Butt-Head (played by Mikey Day) sitting right behind her — complete with a “gray shirt and exposed gums.”

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