Saturday Night Live‘s Heidi Gardner said she tried mighty hard not to break character during last weekend’s now-viral Beavis and Butt-Head sketch, but seeing fellow cast member Mikey Day in full Butt-Head mode was just too much.
“They were in costume for the earlier rehearsals on Saturday with their wigs and outfits but not the prosthetics,” Gardner told Vulture about Day and Ryan Gosling, who played Beavis. “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.
“When I looked and saw Mikey in the dress rehearsal, I lost it,” she continued. “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.’”
But she couldn’t contain herself and once again broke character (along with Gosling). “Mikey does seem to turn his head just a little bit and bug out his eyes,” she said. “It’s like he’s doing a subtle acknowledgment. That was new…. Something in the way he moved on live television felt like when someone messes with you to make you laugh.”
In the sketch, Gardner played a NewsNation journalist holding a town hall about A.I., with Kenan Thompson playing her MIT professor guest. As the pair discussed A.I., Thompson’s character was distracted by an audience member who looked strikingly similar to Beavis, the animated character created and voiced by Mike Judge.
“There’s a gentleman in your audience who is strikingly similar to Beavis from the cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head,” Thompson’s character said. After Gosling’s Butt-Head is moved to another seat, Thompson observed to Gardner, “Now there’s a gentleman behind you that looks like Butt-Head,” prompting Gardner to turn around and get the full Butt-Head treatment.
Watch the sketch above.
