‘I was shocked’: KC’s Heidi Gardner can’t believe her reaction to viral ‘SNL’ sketch

If you haven’t yet seen what happened to Kansas City’s Heidi Gardner during a “Saturday Night Live” sketch over the weekend, this is it in a nutshell.

Gardner got Beavis-and-Butt-headed.

More than 8 million people as of Wednesday morning have watched the hilarious six minutes on YouTube, which we’ve shared below.

“I’ve never seen Heidi break like that,” is the strong consensus among the show’s fans about the Kansas City native who joined the cast in 2017.

Oh, she broke character big-time, unable to stop laughing on live TV at the sight of host Ryan Gosling as Beavis and fellow cast member Mikey Day as Butt-Head, MTV’s famous cartoon slackers.

Variety has already dubbed it the “now-infamous” sketch.

Gardner plays a NewsNation anchor interviewing a technology professor (KenanThompson) about artificial intelligence. They’re sitting face-to-face in front of a town hall audience.

As Gardner asks the first question, Thompson is distracted when he sees a man in the audience behind her who looks like Beavis.Gosling wore Beavis’ signature blond pompadour.

Is there a problem, Gardner asked Thompson.

“Yeah, there’s a gentleman in your audience who looks strikingly like Beavis from the cartoon ‘Beavis and Butt-Head.’ Just a little distracting,” Thompson says as Gosling looks around in confusion, not realizing he’s the look-alike.

Gardner asks him to move from his seat and starts laughing when she sees Gosling, the audience howling as she tries to stay in character.

And then Day, in full-on makeup and prosthetics as Butt-Head, slips into the seat.

Game over for Gardner, who loathes breaking character and thinks it’s unprofessional, done in by Butt-Head’s exposed gums and teeth.

“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,” Vulture wrote. “Not since Debbie Downer’s (Rachel Dratch’s) ‘It’s official, I can’t have children’ have we seen such collective laughter.”

In an interview with Vulture, Gardner said she saw Gosling and Day in full get-up at dress rehearsal earlier that night. But during the show, the gums and teeth pushed her and the sketch into “SNL” infamy.

“I’m still trying to figure out what exactly happened to me,” she said.

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, Gardner said.

”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 rehearsals 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.

“They were in costume for the earlier rehearsals on Saturday with their wigs and outfits but not the prosthetics,” she said. “But yes, 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.

“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.

“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.”

But all the pep talks didn’t help.

“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 said. “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.’”

And for the record, yes, she did watch “Beavis and Butt-Head” growing up in Kansas City. The Notre Dame de Sion grad comes home frequently and co-hosts the annual Big Slick Celebrity Weekend fundraiser for Children’s Mercy. (And she’s a big Chiefs fan. Just ask Travis Kelce.)

“What’s crazy is … a close friend gave me a Butt-Head ornament for Christmas that their mom had,” she told Vulture.

“My dressing room is such a collection of what my teenage bedroom would’ve been. There’s all of this nostalgia and posters everywhere. I realized my dressing room was the perfect place for it, so I have it hanging right in front of my mirror. I’ve been seeing Butt-Head every day for four months. Something’s been manifesting this moment.”