It’s been three weeks since Ryan Gosling’s Saturday Night Live episode aired on the 2024 TV schedule, and people still can’t stop laughing about the Season 49 SNL host and Mikey Day dressing up as Beavis and Butt-Head. Since the sketch aired and went viral, many of its stars have spoken out about how basically everyone broke, focusing specifically on Heidi Gardner losing it when she saw her co-star as Butt-Head for the first time. Now, Mikey Day is telling his side of this story, explaining how his look made his co-star break during the hilarious viral moment.
The sketch featured Gosling and Day playing guys who looked like Beavis and Butt-Head who were attending a talk about AI, and it centered around how distracting they were because of their looks. Both men were wearing prosthetics, and when cast members laid eyes on them, they couldn’t help but crack up, especially Heidi Gardner, who was playing the moderator.
Mikey Day was then asked why his co-star couldn’t stop laughing when he appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and he proceeded to explain the differences between how he looked during dress rehearsal and the live show:
At dress, the wig was a little far forward, so air there was just more head, and it felt like my face was more, because it’s a lot to take in. By the way, Jodi Mancuso, Louie Zakarian, amazing, did the hair and prosthetics. So they did like 90% of it.
Mikey Day went on to explain that Gardner told him her thoughts on his appearance, saying he looked like an alien of sorts. I’d imagine seeing your friend in all those silly prosthetics for the first time on air would be a lot to take in. So, I totally get why she broke. It makes even more sense when you read what her co-star said next about their relationship off-screen:
But, Heidi said ‘You didn’t look human. You looked not of this world’ And, you know, we’re pretty close, so we make each other laugh very easily.
Seth Meyers, who is an SNL alum himself, went on to ask Day if he put some extra “sauce” on his performance to try and get Gardner to laugh. Moments on SNL where cast members break are some of the funniest and most iconic, so it makes sense why the actor admitted to adding a little extra flair to his performance, as he said:
I did put a little more [sauce on it.] I just kind of tried to look her right in the eyes and just go ‘Hi! I’m insane!’
If I were in that sketch, I would have been like Heidi Gardner, not Kenan Thompson, who was one of the few who didn’t break. Day and Gosling looked wild in the bit, and it 100% caught me by surprise and left me laughing. It sounds like the exact same thing happened to Gardner when she saw her co-star behind her.
Like many fans who are still laughing about the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch, I can’t get enough about how they pulled it off and the cast members’ reactions to it. On top of that, I thought it was fantastic when Gosling and Day reprised their roles at The Fall Guy premiere last week.
All-in-all, this is proving to be one of the most iconic moments in modern SNL history, and I’m so happy Mikey Day told his side of the story regarding how the sketch ended up with basically everyone in hysterics.
To go back and see this sketch within its Saturday Night Live episode, you can stream it with a Peacock subscription. If you want to see Gardner and Day killing it “live from New York,” you can catch new episodes of SNL on Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC or Peacock.