{"id":248050,"date":"2025-10-29T06:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T06:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/248050\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T06:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T06:16:11","slug":"heidi-gardner-and-ego-nwodim-on-challenging-environment-at-snl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/248050\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim on ‘Challenging’ Environment at ‘SNL’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAfter leaving \u201cSaturday Night Live<\/a>\u201d before Season 51, Heidi Gardner<\/a> and Ego Nwodim<\/a> got candid about the work culture at the iconic late-night sketch show.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile hosting Gardner on her \u201cThanks Dad\u201d podcast<\/a>, Nwodim said the \u201cSNL\u201d cast has to spend a lot of \u201cintimate\u201d time together writing and rehearsing, which can either bring everyone together or breed contempt within the group.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo have to share such an intimate space together for hours on end on Saturdays and Thursdays and Fridays, whenever we were rehearsing, yeah, it made us close quick,\u201d Nwodim explained. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t have to work that way. It could also not make you close. It can make you not like each other. It can make you feel whatever mutually, \u2018I\u2019m sharing a space with this person.\u2019 But I\u2019m so grateful we got so close.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGardner added that she was grateful for the friendship she and Nwodim built while on the show and was thankful that egos never got in the way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m so honored that we worked so hard there, and then we also worked on our friendship so hard, which wasn\u2019t hard, by the way,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cI just mean we\u2019re human, so we have egos, we want things for ourselves, we want to succeed. There weren\u2019t a lot of times we were able to succeed the way we wanted at the exact same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater in the discussion, Nwodim said it can be challenging to feel like the \u201cSNL\u201d cast is \u201cwinning together,\u201d which, among other reasons, makes the show \u201cnot the easiest place to work.\u201d However, she praised Gardner for being \u201csuch a light in what can be such a challenging place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added, \u201cBut I\u2019m like, if you can leave \u2014 in a place where it can get so competitive and you can become so self involved, if you can leave and be still remarkably lovely and such a light and still pouring into other people like you, I think you succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGardner unveiled her exit<\/a> from \u201cSNL\u201d on Aug. 28 after being on the show for eight seasons, while Nwodim left <\/a>on Sept. 12 after her seventh. The \u201cSNL\u201d cast experienced a major shakeup <\/a>before Season 51, with Devon Walker<\/a>, Emil Wakim<\/a> and Michael Longfellow<\/a> all leaving the show. Please Don\u2019t Destroy member Ben Marshall was pulled up to the main cast, while Martin Herlihy moved to the writing staff and John Higgins left the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After leaving \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d before Season 51, Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim got candid about the work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,147290,134,74586,33892],"class_list":{"0":"post-248050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-ego-nwodim","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-heidi-gardner","14":"tag-saturday-night-live"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}