Heidi Gardner Leaves ‘SNL’ in Search of New Characters to Explore

It was one thing when Saturday Night Live said goodbye this week to three younger cast members who struggled to earn screen time. But now Heidi Gardner is also leaving the show, a performer with a legacy that’s worth applauding as she moves on to greener comedy pastures.

Gardner was dropping hints throughout Season 50 that it might be her last. With eight seasons under her belt, she admitted to Craig Ferguson that her well of comedy ideas was beginning to run dry. “I will say the only thing that I’ve started to feel a little bit is just sketch fatigue, or idea fatigue,” she said. “At this point, after doing Groundlings and SNL for so long, I’m like, ‘I’ve written a lot of sketches.’”

The comic was at her funniest on the Weekend Update desk, where she could dive into a finely observed character and simply riff. 

She made an instant impression on SNL fans as teen film critic Bailey Gismert, the awkwardly confident YouTube star who simultaneously believed everyone loved her while she shrank into her sweater. The character had crazy charisma with Michael Che. “I didn't realize you knew like everything about me,” she’d tell him. “I guess Michael Che is my stalker.”

She also scored as Angel, otherwise known as Every Boxer's Girlfriend from Every Movie About Boxing Ever. When she wasn’t taking the kids to her sister’s to protest her man’s final fight, she could sound off about the latest iPhone. “I don’t give up on my old iPhone after a year, all right?” she manages through her tears. “You think you are the fighter? I'm the fighter. I’ve still got my 4S, all right? You know where I’m going to be the day that phone comes out? At my sister’s, with my kids.”

At a moment’s notice, Gardner could morph into Dianne, The Mom Who's Only Read About New York on Facebook, or Crystal, Your Co-Worker Who Is Extremely Busy Doing Seemingly Nothing. Those one-woman tour de forces on Weekend Update killed every time, but she could also play it straight as a reporter trying to conduct an interview about artificial intelligence despite the presence of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Okay, she couldn’t play it entirely straight. Gardner’s most viral sketch featured the comic cracking up uncontrollably, a sin she vowed never to commit. But “when I looked and saw Mikey in the dress rehearsal, I lost it,” she told Vulture. She promised herself she wouldn’t let it happen again during the live show. The audience lost it when she broke yet again. 

When Gardner spoke to Ferguson this spring, she was already looking ahead to what comes after Saturday Night Live. After eight years of playing a variety of comic characters, it’s clear she was looking to take a deeper dive.

“I know whatever I do next, I’d love to have a show that I co-star in and co-write, and it’s a character and it’s a world,” she said. “And it’s a character I get to live in for a while and explore more.”