After eight seasons on SNL, Heidi Gardner has hung up her wigs, so let’s look back at the 10 best sketches she ever starred in. Gardener announced her departure from the sketch comedy series shortly before the start of season 51, marking the end of the longest-tenured female cast member’s career.
Gardner started her career on SNL in season 43 in 2017, hired alongside Luke Null and Chris Redd. For the first few years, Gardner was a reliable, though muted performer, who would not appear often, but when she did, it was hard not to be impressed. Over her eight seasons, she amassed a collection of fantastic sketches.
Barbie Instagram
“Barbie Instagram” is an absurdly weird SNL sketch that sees two Mattel managers focus testing a new Barbie Instagram initiative. To find the perfect caption, they bring in three employees played by Heidi Gardner, Pete Davidson, and Donald Glover. Glover is the real star of the skit, but Gardner is a close second.
Gardner’s character, Tamra, appears to be having a hard time understanding what each Instagram post is supposed to represent, and also seems to have a tenuous grasp on human logic. A picture of Barbie staring off at a sunset elicits Tamra’s caption suggestion, “It’s almost not-night anymore.”
Weekend Update: Instagram Couple Nico Slobkin And Brie Bacardi
Nico Slobkin (Mikey Day) and Brie Bacardi (Heidi Gardner) are recurring Weekend Update characters. These influencers are best known for sharing an Instagram account on which they post pictures of their perfect relationship. After about five seconds on the Update desk, however, it’s clear they hate one another.
The pair is all about aesthetics and seem to have absolutely nothing in common. Every fight goes from 0 to 100 in a second, and even when it seems like they are joking, the laughs quickly turn manic, and they are pointing fingers. Gardner is perfect as an overly excited, insecure, angry wannabe influencer.
Weekend Update: Angel, Every Boxer’s Girlfriend From Every Movie About Boxing Ever
Angel, Every Boxer’s Girlfriend From Every Movie About Boxing Ever, is a fantastic recurring character on Weekend Update and a hilarious send-up of the genre and the trope. Heidi Gardner always rolls in front of the desk with her hair frazzled, her mascara running, and speaking with an unidentifiable East Coast accent.
She’s worked at a lot of bars, has a kid named Peppers, and constantly threatens to take her kids to her sisters. Angel is fed up with her different husbands’ lies and seeming death wishes. She shares similar frustrations with other pieces of news as well, such as the release of the new iPhone and the Royal Wedding.
Mile-High Burger Challenge
“Mile-High Burger Challenge” gives Heidi Gardner the chance to showcase a dimension of physical comedy of her repertoire. This is a restaurant skit that sees a family gathered together to discuss the next steps for their father, who is showing signs of dementia. Gardner plays Jane, Nick’s (Nate Bargatze) girlfriend.
The serious conversation is interrupted by a waiter who announces Jane has accidentally elected to complete the “Mile-High Burger Challenge”, which involves eating a massive burger made of stacked patties. Jane proceeds to devour the pile of meat while spitting out unwanted life advice for the siblings. It’s gross, hilarious, and the cast can barely get through it.
Winery Tour
Shane Gillis plays a browbeaten boyfriend in “Winery Tour”, a skit that allows Heidi Gardner to showcase her talent for weird voices, physical comedy, rubber face, and knack for embodying a very specific kind of online person. Gardner is Gillis’ girlfriend on a trip to the winery with Gillis’ parents.
Things start to get weird when Gardner asks Gillis to take some photos. One “cute pic” turns into an entire photoshoot with Gardner striking increasingly strange poses, and making demands like, “Be a man“, and “Get the top of my head, not my shoulders, but then my legs.” She’s insufferable, but I could watch a dozen more skits with her.
Weekend Update: Bailey Gismert On Old Movies
Bailey Gismert (Heidi Gardner) on Weekend Update on SNL.
Bailey Gismert was one of Heidi Gardner’s breakout roles on Saturday Night Live and a memorable Weekend Update character to boot. Bailey is a teenage internet film critic who can barely sit still in a chair and wears her sweater sleeves over her hands. Bailey doesn’t seem to understand the concept of movies at times.
She has schoolgirl crushes on the likes of Pikachu, who she believes is real, and often misses the obvious thematic point of a lot of films. Gardner perfectly channels a high school girl when she thinks Michael Che is showing her attention, giggling and touching her hair. It’s scarily accurate and always funny.
Blue Bunny Ice Cream
This “Blue Bunny Ice Cream” sketch is a group effort. Mikey Day is playing the middle manager internally losing his mind, Kenan Thompson is bemused by the events around him, and Melissa Villaseñor is an ice cream tester who doesn’t seem to understand the assignment, but it’s host Benedict Cumberbatch and Heidi Gardner who make the sketch.
Cumberbatch, Gardner, Villaseñor, and Thomson are brought in to taste test Blue Bunny ice cream. Cumberbatch and Gardner are pulled right out of a show like Yellowstone, two cowpokes who don’t have time for games. They’re there to try ice cream, and god willing, fall in love. Gardner’s southern drawl is something else.
Taco Math
“Taco Math” is one of the rare SNL sketches that uses the same joke over and over, but somehow gets funnier the longer it goes on. In the episode, Heidi Gardner and Jessica Chastain, a wildly underrated SNL host, are two friends out for lunch. The waiter (Mikey Day) tells them about their buy one, get one free taco offer.
Big mistake. Gardner and Chastain cannot comprehend what buy one, get one free means, and no matter how many times the waiter explains it, they can’t move on. The pair is so fantastically ditzy together. Gardner, at one point, says she doesn’t want a beef taco because she recently ate a bunch of raw hamburger because she was “being funny.”
Deep Quote Game Night
While Heidi Gardner is adept at conjuring very specific types of real people we’ve all had the displeasure of knowing, she’s also pretty great at creating memorable characters that you have no real-world comparisons to. In “Deep Quote Game Night”, Gardner plays an immature party guest who knows way too many movie quotes.
A game of “Guess the movie quote” basically turns into a sensual date between Daniel Craig and Gardner’s characters, who only need to say a single word for the other to guess the movie. It’s so funny and strange, and Gardner’s immediate gravitation to the like-minded Craig is elevated by his equal interest in her.
The Last Dance: Extended Scene
If you’ve seen The Last Dance, a fantastic miniseries that can be found on Netflix, you may remember the scene of Michael Jordan flipping quarters with his security guards, an example of his constant need to compete. What you may not have noticed is that the bushy-haired guard looks like Heidi Gardner if you squint.
Credit needs to go to the SNL costume and makeup team for making Gardner look like a hip dude in the ’90s, but she mimics the man from the scene to a tee. It’s a hilarious “extended” version of the coin-flipping scene that sees Gardner’s security guard getting deeper and deeper into debt to an overzealous Jordan (Michael Key).
Release Date
October 11, 1975
Showrunner
Lorne Michaels
Directors
Dave Wilson, Don Roy King, Liz Patrick, Andy Warhol, Linda Lee Cadwell, Matthew Meshekoff, Paul Miller, Robert Altman, Robert Smigel
Writers
Will Forte, Bill Hader, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Chris Parnell, Asa Taccone, John Lutz, Tom Schiller, Simon Rich, Michael Patrick O’Brien, Nicki Minaj, Herbert Sargent, Matt Piedmont, John Solomon, Chris Kelly, Alan Zweibel, Kent Sublette, Ari Katcher, Marika Sawyer, Sarah Schnedier, Scott Jung, Justin Franks, Jerrod Bettis, Rhiannon Bryan
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