For Gardner’s part, she actually felt bad and worried about breaking during the live show — even though every cast member in the sketch, from Chloe Fineman (seen above) to Michael Longfellow broke at some point during the bit. She explained further:
“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’m thinking about it right now and laughing. 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. I even saw Mikey out of the corner of my eye seconds before I went live. I saw the red shorts. I knew I couldn’t look over there again. Mikey even told me later that he was bending down and hiding himself so I wouldn’t see him.”
In fact, Gardner’s not even ready to take credit for making the sketch funnier by breaking, mostly because she still feels like that means she didn’t do her job well, no matter how encouraging everyone was afterward. But she fully acknowledged that it’s a moment that will stick with her forever:
“It’s really hard for me to give myself any sort of credit because I didn’t do the job. I hope, for those guys and their portrayals of Beavis and Butt-Head, that it helped how shocked I was by how funny they were. And I hope it helps people think of the sketch. I’ll never be able to shake looking over my shoulder and seeing what I saw. That’s really special.”
Gardner’s big guffaw should make the extras in that sketch feel great, because not a single one of them looks like they’re anywhere near breaking character. But as a longtime “SNL” fan, I’ll always be glad that Gardner couldn’t help but laugh during this fantastic sketch.