{"id":117118,"date":"2025-08-28T23:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/117118\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T23:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T23:14:07","slug":"heidi-gardner-leaving-snl-after-eight-seasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/117118\/","title":{"rendered":"Heidi Gardner Leaving &#8216;SNL&#8217; After Eight Seasons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/heidi-gardner\/\" id=\"auto-tag_heidi-gardner\" data-tag=\"heidi-gardner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Heidi Gardner<\/a> is leaving \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d after eight seasons, multiple sources tell Variety.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe news comes amid a shake-up at the NBC sketch comedy series, which this week saw the departure of Michael Longfellow, Emil Wakim and Devon Walker ahead of Season 51.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tLast season, Gardner was the longest-tenured current female cast member. In Season 49, she appeared in more sketches than any other cast member. She is well-known for her \u201cWeekend Update\u201d characters including the teen movie critic Bailey Gismert and Angel, \u201cevery boxer\u2019s girlfriend from every movie about boxing ever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tOutside of \u201cSNL,\u201d Gardner has appeared in \u201cShrinking\u201d alongside Jason Segel, as well as \u201cThe Other Two\u201d and the Adam Sandler basketball movie \u201cHustle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tNBC declined to make producers available for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tGardner marks the latest example of a roster refresh happening at Studio 8H. Walker\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2025\/tv\/news\/devon-walker-exits-snl-1236498152\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced his departure<\/a>\u00a0from \u201cSNL\u201d on Instagram on Aug. 25, writing, \u201cMe and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell. But we did what we made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction. We made a fucked up lil family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cI won\u2019t be returning to SNL next year. It was a gut punch of a call to get but I\u2019m so grateful for my time there,\u201d Wakim wrote in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2025\/tv\/news\/emil-wakim-snl-exit-saturday-night-live-1236499706\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">his announcement<\/a>. \u201cEvery time I scanned into the building I would think how insane it is to get to work there. It was the most terrifying, thrilling, and rewarding experience of my life and I will miss it dearly and all the brilliant people that work there that made it feel like a home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d returns on NBC on Oct. 4 with the premiere of Season 51. The new season comes off the heels of a landmark 50th anniversary, which was feted with with several documentaries, a Radio City Music Hall concert special and a three-hour telecast with \u201cSNL\u201d legends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heidi Gardner is leaving \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d after eight seasons, multiple sources tell Variety. The news comes amid&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,75715],"class_list":{"0":"post-117118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-heidi-gardner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}