Before the 51st season of the premiere of “Saturday Night Live” on October 4, 2025, the showrunner Lorne Michaels teased a “shake-up” at the end of the evening (via Puck). After making this promise by focusing the distribution members like Devon Walker, the Norm Macdonald-Esque Michael Longfellow and the star player in a single season Emil Wakim, one of the biggest changes to date came with a word that the long-standing actor Heidi Gardner would not return to “SNL”.
Vulture was the first to report on the departure of Heidi Gardner of “SNL”. As for the reasoning, it is not clear if Gardner was not questioned or if she chose to leave the show after eight seasons. However, we bet that it is the latter, especially since Gardner has arisen in a variety of other projects in recent years.
While enjoying his stay at “SNL”, Gardner won a key support role in the Apple TV + “Shrinking” series, not to mention a role in the Basketball drama of Netflix by Adam Sandler “Hustle”. She also acted as one of the judges of the HBO Max Competition series “Second Chance Stage” in 2024, so she did not miss opportunities outside “SNL”, and leaving the series will give her much more time to continue other projects.
At “SNL”, the members of the distribution reached five seasons, as well as obtaining an increase, their chances of leaving the series to increase – generally because their profile is also larger outside the show. Gardner was a long -standing fans favorite, and she has probably reached the point where she has accomplished everything she can at the show, and it’s time to move on.
Let’s take a look at some of the best “SNL” pieces over the years.
Heidi Gardner was one of the best SNL players
One of the most famous moments of Gardner on “SNL” occurred not so long ago, when a sketch became viral because of its breaking character and having trouble controlling laughter in the middle of a sketch. The time has come when she was confronted with her colleague, Mikey Day and the host Ryan Gosling, made live versions of the animated articulations known as Beavis and Butt-Head:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86qkgk0asgo
After the sketch came out of the rails, Gardner initially felt bad in the sketch, but once she realized that she was not going to have problems for the hilarious misstep, she appreciated the reactions and dear the viral reputation of the sketch. It will certainly be one of his best moments in the series.
Gardner was not foreign to the creation of original characters on “SNL” either, in particular those who appeared at the weekend update office. For our interests, we certainly cannot prevent ourselves from remembering the adolescent film critic Bailey Gismé:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRMDXU6W21G
Also on the side of things related to the cinema, we would be negligent if we have not mentioned Angel, the girlfriend of each boxer of each film on boxing. This edition even managed to bring the star of the franchise “Creed” Michael B. Jordan for an additional layer of pleasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9oeekqn6ri
The actress did not hesitate to dig into physical comedy if necessary, as evidenced by this sketch where she looks impatiently a challenge to hamburger in an inappropriate restaurant, which leads to a lot of food on her face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joenrsbths
These are just a few protruding facts that come out, but Garden has been a “SNL” pillar for a long time, easily capable of integrating into any type of role in the series. She was about to play the right person when someone else took the spotlight, and she also had a lot of original and original characters whom she gave life over the years.
Gardner’s departure leaves a major gap in the “SNL” list, and it will be interesting to see how Lorne Michaels manages to compensate for his absence.
