By the way, it’s official: The April 13 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Ryan Gosling, was season 49’s most-watched. Credit the charismatic emcee, and his characteristically game attitude when it comes to comedy. But this was also the episode where, after seven years on the show, Heidi Gardner finally broke.

It happened in “Beavis and Butt-Head,” a sketch starring Gardner as a news anchor trying to interview an MIT dean (Kenan Thompson) about AI. Unfortunately, Thompson’s character keeps getting distracted by Dean (Gosling) and Jeff (Mikey Day), two strangers who happen to bear an uncanny resemblance to MTV cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-Head.

What made the sketch “canonical,” to quote The New York Times, wasn’t the premise. It was the way Day’s Butt-Head doppelgänger caused Gardner to burst into uncontrollable laughter for roughly 20 seconds—an eternity on live TV. She couldn’t shake the giggles as she tried to compose herself and continue the sketch.

Audiences love it when SNL cast members break (see “Debbie Downer” and “Lisa From Temecula”), so watching the normally unflappable Gardner join the ranks of serial breakers like Jimmy Fallon and Bill Hader was especially charming. The sketch made headlines (“One of the Best SNL Sketches…Ever,” proclaimed the Daily Beast) and went all kinds of viral, with 16 million views on SNL’s YouTube channel alone.

The rapturous reaction is especially sweet to cowriters Streeter Seidell and Day, who had come this close to getting their pet sketch idea on air over the last six years. Here, SNL’s cast and crew tell Vanity Fair about the sketch’s “fantastic journey” and why, to quote a Yahoo story, “Everyone’s Still Talking about the SNL ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ Sketch.”

“Beavis and Butt-Head” has its roots in a 2017 sketch,“Google Talk,” featuring that episode’s host (Jessica Chastain) as Summer Childs, host of a live-streaming event on bullying. Day costars as Bert Sampson, who looks uncannily like Bart Simpson. In this sketch, Bert knows all too well he looks like Bart, and the other audience members, bullying victims themselves, turn on him rapidly. “Don’t have a cow,” one tells Bert.

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Mikey Day (writer and “Butt-Head”): Streeter and I just love the concept of people who look like cartoons in real life, so we reverse-engineered a setup where there was an audience and a cartoon-looking person who was hijacking this Google Talk. [Wig designer/hair department head] Jodi Mancuso just absolutely crushed my Bart Simpson wig. I still talk to her about it. It’s an interesting art form to transfer a cartoon look into real life. It’s very specific. It has to look like it can grow on a real person, but at the same time, you see it and you definitely think of the cartoon. That really made it.

Streeter Seidell (writer): Mikey and I always find it funny when something is happening in the background. We did a sketch last year called “Waffle House” where all the jokes are happening in the background. It’s a different way to get a laugh. I remember Mikey had that [Bert Sampson] idea, and we worked it up. It was fun to set up this big set for this one stupid little joke. Any time something goes pretty well at SNL, you bank it and see if that format has something we can explore again.

In 2018, the pair wrote “Beavis and Butt-Head” for an episode hosted by Jonah Hill.

Seidell: It was pretty much always Beavis and Butt-Head. We talked about other characters: the South Park gang, Rick and Morty…

Day: We considered Tommy Pickles and Chuckie from Rugrats. At one point, I had thought about He-Man, because he has very specific hair.

Seidell: It had to hit the cross section of the Venn diagram; what’s going to look funny but also everyone’s going to know immediately?

Day: Jonah did a great job (as Beavis), but the sketch wasn’t quite there yet. The through line, the equivalent of what became the AI symposium, was an interview with a Gone Girl, Scott Peterson–type who people suspect of killing his wife, and he’s having this interview to clear his name.

Seidell: It played really well at dress, but Lorne was like, “That might be too dark. You might be fighting the humor of the thing.”

Lorne Michaels (SNL creator and executive producer): The game of it is that there’s a real, serious thing going on, and here are these two guys. It depends on how deeply you want to get into the straight line. How do you make it real so there’s stakes, but not so somber as to depress the audience? It needs to be a situation which is coming very much out of left field and upstages the whole thing.

Day: In between dress and air, Lorne actually had us rewrite the straight line and we made it into a political thing,

Seidell: We made it about a politician who was suspected of embezzling money. Weirdly, none of the jokes were changing, but every single line and all the graphics had to change before air. And then it got cut for time.

Day: I was dressed in full Butt-Head costume with this bald pate on my head and the wig and the prosthetic mouthpiece. [Costume designer] Tom Broecker walked by me and was like, “Uh, that’s been cut.”

Seidell: It’s always very funny when someone is in hair and makeup, and they are finding out it was all for nothing.

Day: It’s super not fun when you’re dressed as Butt-Head.

Seidell: I was exhausted and devastated. I think our producer Steve [Higgins] bought me a nice bottle of whiskey.

Take two of “Beavis and Butt-Head” came in a 2022 episode hosted by Oscar Isaac. Once again, it was picked for the show. This time, it was cut on Friday for technical reasons; the set was too big. Then, in 2024, Ryan Gosling was slated to host the show again.

Seidell: This sketch was always our white whale. Normally, Mikey is hesitant to resubmit things, but I think with this one, we just had a feeling it would work great with Ryan. He’s so game.

Day: Usually if something doesn’t go, you just keep moving forward, but there was something about this one sketch. We said we just want to do it once. Every time Ryan hosts, it just feels magical. He’s this prince who comes into 8H and sprinkles magic dust. We have so much fun with him.

Seidell: Our thinking was with Ryan Gosling, it’s now or never. If it doesn’t go now, it’s never going to go, and if anybody can get this one over the finish line, it’s Ryan. The reason we kept believing in it was because both times it got cut it was cut for a technicality, not because it bombed.

Day: Lorne gave the sketch another shot, thankfully.

Michaels: I never doubted the piece.

With Ryan on board, the next step was casting.

Day: Obviously, you can rely on everyone in the cast. I’m very close with Heidi. I know her from the Groundlings. I thought she would be really good at the straight reporter role. And Kenan is just astoundingly solid, so he’s great to have as the one who is calling out what’s happening and slowly losing his temper.

Heidi Gardner (“Bobbi Moore”): To prep for the Wednesday table read, I go to my computer in my dressing room, and I look for the sketches I’m in. And I pulled that one up, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, Mikey and Streeter resubmitted that.” I knew that was one they always wanted to get on. It was their white whale. I didn’t think a lot of it other than I was glad for them. I noticed I was the moderator, so I really wanted to make sure I could deliver the news vernacular correctly. And it went well. I remember thinking, It’s getting new laughs. There’s a lot of new writers and cast hearing it for the first time.

Kenan Thompson (“Norman Hemming”): I love Mikey. I knew him before he and I were on the show. The fact that he loves to put me in his stuff is hyper-complimentary. I love making him laugh.

The table read was promising.

Day: Ryan and I weren’t in makeup and costume, although it is very funny to imagine Ryan Gosling in full Beavis outfit and makeup during a three-hour table read. We did put a picture of Beavis and Butt-Head from the cartoon in the script. Everyone knew what they looked like, but we thought it was funny to include a picture with their white socks and skinny legs.

Louie Zakarian (makeup department head): Whenever I sit in a read-through and listen to sketches, I envision them in my head. Mikey and Streeter write some of the funniest stuff week after week. As soon as they read it, I was like, “This is going to be a fun one.” The energy at the table was great.

Gardner: I made it through [without breaking]. I knew all the turns that were coming since I had heard it before. I was just trying to do a good job. I was unaware of what it would become.

Liz Patrick (director): I knew the sketch had the potential to be a highlight. I have a background working at MTV, so Beavis and Butt-Head have been in my life. I wasn’t at SNL the first time they tried it with Jonah Hill, but I was there with Oscar Isaac. When I saw it come back, I thought, this might be a perfect fit for Ryan, and it turns out it was.

Seidell: On paper, it’s not the funniest thing. It really is this marriage of the words, the costumes, and the attitude. It’s way more fun as a whole package.

Day: I don’t know if there was a buzz, like, “This is going to be a big deal.” I know that during blocking rehearsal, Ryan and I were definitely giggling. I know Streeter and I really wanted it to work. Lorne gave us our third shot at it. It was like, “All right, we’ve got to put our money where our mouth is.” We stacked the deck as much as we could and got Gosling in there.

Gardner: With “Beavis and Butt-Head,” just the fact it had already been around, it wasn’t the shining star. In a Ryan Gosling show, everything has a lot of potential. They were shooting a sequel to the “Papyrus” sketch which had gone viral, and Kate [McKinnon] came back for another “Close Encounters” sketch. Those are the things, just as a fan, that I’m interested in. Of course, I’m grateful for any role, but there wasn’t a lot of talk around Beavis and Butt-Head.

Now came the tricky bit: Transforming Gosling and Day into live-action cartoons, and realizing Day’s and Streeter’s vision in performance.

Zakarian: I start on a Monday or Tuesday, when the host comes in. I do a 3D scan of them in case they need prosthetics or facial hair or anything like that. We put their 3D scan on a printer so that by Wednesday night, I have their face in case we need to build anything. In this instance, they came in very handy. Wednesday night is the table read, when they read through 40-some scripts. All the department heads sit in. We found out around 10-ish that we would be doing “Beavis and Butt-Head.”

Jodi Mancuso (wig designer/hair department head): The first challenge or question is: Are they really cartoon-y, or is this a human version of a cartoon? You’re considering time as well, especially as a host is involved. There is only so much you can do to a host with the time you have.

Zakarian: I usually start with some drawings on my laptop or iPad. Butt-Head has a very big forehead and no hair on the sides of his head, so I’ll look at Mikey’s life cast and start roughly sculpting in clay, and cutting a nose off of a drawing and putting it on Mikey’s head. That’s my Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, I’ll take his physical life cast and start throwing some clay on top of the head and sculpting the nose, sculpting a fake mouth to give him that ridiculous Butt-Head lip and braces, just to get an idea of what I can and cannot pull off in the time frame. We’ve only got two days to build everything and put it all together. The first time we’re going to see it on him—we don’t get camera tests—is going to be Saturday night for the dress rehearsal.

Patrick: I usually attend the pitch meeting and just listen in. Usually, the first time I’m hearing an idea is when I’m reading it on Wednesday, preparing for our read-through. At first glance, I take notes: Can we shoot this in the studio, how big does it need to be, do we need a staircase, do we need a stunt guy? I leave the prosthetics and hair to those departments, but they fill me in if I’m going to have a tall wig, a crazy outfit. So it’s just a matter of putting all our pieces together, but Wednesday is my first day learning what’s about to come.

Zakarian: I built Mikey nose tips to give him that Butt-Head sort of nose. He had a bald pate to give him that hairline. Then Jodi would put on the wig, so he has that giant forehead. The biggest challenge was how to make that lip thing. I basically made a fake set of teeth with braces on them, but there was a little protrusion that stuck up and came up over his lip so that when he put his lip on top of it, it held his lip in place.

Day: It’s amazing how this tiny little mouthpiece gives it that look.

Zakarian: To bring a cartoon character to life and make it three-dimensional and put it on actors is one of the biggest challenges I’ve had to deal with in the 30 years I’ve been there. The other major challenge in a live show is time. For Mikey, we had maybe 15-20 minutes, but Ryan was the host, so for dress rehearsal, we had three minutes and 20 seconds. Between dress and air, I told the producers we need a little more time. They came back to us with, “We got you 10 more seconds.” In our world, 10 seconds is a joy.

The sketch scored in dress rehearsal, and it looked like Day and Seidell would finally land their white whale. But there were indications that “Beavis and Butt-Head” would put the ensemble’s commitment to the test.

Thompson: Heidi and I are both prone to keeping it together; we’ll get our giggles out before the live show. That’s what I did. I laughed so hard at dress rehearsal; I couldn’t control myself for a long time. I scared myself. So I was on my toes for the live show.

Seidell: I remember Kenan having to stop for a few seconds and recalibrate. That’s when I felt this could be a special one.

Thompson: You never want to undercut the possibilities of the writing standing on its own two legs. As opposed to, “That sketch was only funny because everybody was breaking.” No, everybody’s breaking because the sketch is so funny.

Gardner: I had been in a couple of other rehearsals where in general, [Gosling] had the giggles. Run-through was the first time we put on wigs and costumes; we didn’t do makeup yet. We’re running the sketch, and I looked back at Mikey—yeah, it was the first time I saw him in the wig, and I laughed a little. Mikey is like a brother to me at this point. He makes me laugh in a familial way. When I broke at run-through, I did not think I would break again. I just thought, Look at my dumb friend. I didn’t think about it again.

And then at dress, yeah, it took me by surprise when I looked back at him. I lost it; I composed myself. I was pretty shocked. I was a little bit like, “Whoa, Heidi, we’re not going to do that again. You’ve got to serve the sketch.” I thought about the way that Mikey looked so that I was prepared. But every time I would think about him, I would laugh, and I was like, “I’m supposed to be desensitizing myself to this.”

Seidell: Since we had already done a version of it with Jonah, we were able to rewatch that one and we could see, oh, we spent too long in this section, let’s move Ryan out quicker, let’s get them together quicker. Between dress and air, we cut two exchanges out of it. The intention was to do a tight four-minute sketch. We weren’t counting on the breaking adding a lot of time.

Day: In a previous iteration, instead of cutting to characters from King of the Hill, we cut to Daria, who was part of Beavis and Butt-Head. Melissa Villaseñor was a fantastic Daria. But we eventually went with King of the Hill, because we thought, “Let’s get more people out there,” and it would be a fun look.

Which brings us to air, and one tweak to Day’s look that may be responsible for pushing Gardner over the edge.

Mancuso: I felt Mikey’s wig was a little too forward, so I pushed it back a little. I wanted the shape of Ryan’s wig to be a little bit rounder in the front.

Day: At run-through, you’re in costume, but not in full makeup yet. At dress rehearsal, the wig was a little forward, so you saw less of my head. Then at air, the look took its final shape. What Heidi told me is that I didn’t look like a human being. She actually sent me a picture of some kind of creature from some movie that I reminded her of.

Gardner: He looked to me like one of the characters from this movie about kangaroo samurais called Warriors of Virtue. I watched that movie in middle school, so when I looked back and saw Mikey, I immediately thought he was one of the kangaroos from the movie.

Thompson: It hit Heidi so hard. It was amazing to watch.

Gardner: My first lines are direct to camera, welcoming everyone to this show. I could see to the left of the camera that Mikey was right there, but it was out of my eyesight. Any other time I would have looked at my friend and made a joke, but I was like, Oh my God, you cannot look over at him because maybe you’ll start the sketch laughing. I started getting anxious. I have to ground the sketch. I felt like, Okay, I avoided that. I cockily thought, I got this. The first time I had to look back at Ryan, yeah, he was messing with me a little bit. I could tell he gassed it a little bit for me. When I turned back to look at Mikey, he looked directly at me, and moved his head just a little. I lost it so hard, and I wasn’t recovering very quickly.

Day: I did look absolutely insane. I purposely stood off to the side in the shadows so she wouldn’t get a glimpse of me before the sketch. After Ryan exited the frame, and it cut over to Kenan, I did an Exorcist walk under the camera into my seat. I think in her periphery she clocked me getting into my seat, but she still had to be looking forward, so when she turned around she got her first real glimpse of Butt-Head.

Patrick: There is a thing that goes through your head: “How can I fix this?” But it’s also one of those moments you don’t want to fix. I know breaking is frowned upon, but it does bring a certain energy, and the audience thrives on it. I watched the clip again this morning, and it’s remarkable how much energy they added to it, which I’m sure didn’t help Heidi at all.

Thompson: She couldn’t hold it, and poor baby, she was worried it might be a fireable offense. That’s reflective of how seriously we want to do well for the writers. I don’t think she derailed anything. It was a celebration of what she thought was funny.

Day: I laughed a little bit when I was seated next to Ryan. When Ryan says, “I’ve heard rumblings that I resemble someone from TV,” I lost it a little bit. When Heidi was laughing, it was fun to try my best to not break, but mess with her as much as I could. When she looked, I tried to give her a very subtle little widening of my eyes, just to say, “Hello, I look insane.” And when she was laughing, I tried to push her even farther. I tried to get Michael Longfellow, but he held it together. He was great.

Michael Longfellow (“Audience Member”): I avoided eye contact and thought of World War II.

Let’s take a moment now to acknowledge the true heroes of the sketch: the extras, who remained stoic throughout.

Day: They’re amazing. I have no idea how they did it. They were there during the first blocking rehearsal. They were laughing a little bit, because Ryan and I were giggling like two 10-year-old boys. But they were very cool. There’s that part where Heidi makes the little joke, “If you’re just joining us, this is NewsNation, not the Cartoon Network,” we told them to give a subtle chuckle so Ryan and I could do the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh. It’s truly astonishing how straight they played it; they all want to learn about AI.

Seidell: Oh my God; ice in their veins.

Thompson: I’m probably smirking throughout because I just found it all so humorous. Chloe coming in late in the game, while everybody’s crying-laughing, is hard to do. That was my experience in “Debbie Downer.”

But what would Lorne think? He is famously not a fan of breaking, despite what Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler sang in a digital short called “That’s When You Break.” Gardner was nervous.

Day: It was a sincere moment. That’s why I think people responded to it. She was concerned: “Was that okay?” I was like, “No, that was amazing, that was a wonderful moment.”

Gardner: I had one more sketch. [Lorne] was standing there and I made eye contact with him and I started laughing and he started laughing too. That let me know, “Okay, I’m not in trouble.”

Michaels: Famously in “Debbie Downer,” people lost it over “It’s official: I can never have children.” That laugh line is killer. There are ones that are building and building, and someone’s going to lose it. And that’s okay.

“Beavis and Butt-Head” was now destined to go viral—and it did.

Gardner: The fact people were still talking about it on Wednesday was like, “Wow, people really loved this.”

Day: When you start getting friends of friends contacting you, you know it has some reach.

Thompson: It was three hosts later, I’m at a restaurant, and people were still like, passing my table, and saying, “That ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ was crazy.” I’m glad it got on. It’s a tough thing to reintroduce a sketch after it gets cut. The odds aren’t necessarily in your favor, but if you believe in your concept and your squad, everything may align for you. It also comes down to a game host. I think Ryan was hyper-tickled by the whole thing. He just loved it so much.

Patrick: I had come from MTV, so a lot of my old MTV friends were reaching out, going, “That was one of the best sketches of the season.” Then you start realizing, “We really have a hit.”

Dean and Jeff were such a sensation that a couple of weeks after the episode, they resurfaced unexpectedly to attend the world premiere of Gosling’s The Fall Guy—in full Beavis and Butt-Head costume and makeup.

Day: Ryan contacted me and said, “What do you think of Dean and Jeff walking the red carpet at the Fall Guy premiere? Is that insane?” I said, “Yes, but it’s awesome.” A few days later, Ryan texted me and said, “They will arrange your travel.”

Seidell: How do you say no to that? The best part was watching Mikey panic for a week. He was like, “I have to be standing next to Ryan, because if I’m not, it just looks like I just showed up dressed like this as Mikey Day trying to cash in. I don’t want that.” Closer to the day, it got ironed out.

Zakarian: We flew out and did the whole thing all over again at the red carpet. In all my years, that was the only time I’d done anything like that. The best part was they were, again, Dean and Jeff, who happen to look like Beavis and Butt-Head.

Day: I got into Butt-Head while Ryan was walking the red carpet. He comes into the tent in his suit, looking like a full movie star, just this beautiful man, and I’m standing there in my red shorts. He gets into Beavis and then we walked the red carpet for 10 minutes. Even as Beavis, you’re like, “Okay, that’s a beautiful Beavis.” I give Louie and Jodi infinite credit.

It’s been a month since the triumphant end to Beavis and Butt-Head’s six-year journey, and it still feels like a gift to everyone involved. Why ask why?

Mancuso: When we’re at our best, it doesn’t need to be explained why something is funny.

Gardner: Number one, you’re not expecting to see Beavis and Butt-Head randomly pop up in 2024 on SNL. Parents have told me, I was watching it with my kids, and they were laughing because it just looked so stupid. Seeing their parent really losing it is such a good example of how laughter is infectious. You can never plan that.

Michaels: I think Heidi had a good season, period. There was evidence of it at the end of last season. She came into her own where she stopped being somebody who was doing characters. You got to see who she is shine through. That’s when you’ve made it on the show.

Thompson: Being a part of something that goes viral benefits everybody. It definitely benefited our funny bone that day, because man, those were some really, really good laughs.

Gardner: A childhood best friend of mine reached out to me the next day, and she said it was so great to see me laugh like that because she’d seen me laugh like that our whole lives. I love to play characters and kind of hide behind them, but that was letting people know, “This is who I am.” I will never forget that.