In a wide-ranging interview with Variety, “Saturday Night Live” writer/performer Mikey Day discussed the viral “Beavis and Butt-head” sketch that left him, host Ryan Gosling, the cast, and the audience in stitches. The April 2024 episode was watched by 8.9 million viewers, while the YouTube video has logged over 23 million views in the 14 months since it aired. The sketch, though, almost didn’t happen at all. It had been scrapped for two previous hosts, Jonah Hill way back in 2018 and Oscar Isaac in 2022, Day revealed.
“We were all going to give up on it,” Day said, but added that Gosling “changes our lives every time he hosts.”
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In an appearance on Seth Meyers, Day added that he “loved” Gosling. “He just came in and sprinkled his magic dust over everything,” he said.
Series hair stylist Jodi Mancuso and makeup artist Louie Zakarian both said that the sketch was canceled when Hill hosted in 2018 because the prosthetics weren’t up to par yet.
“Even at that time it was late coming into the show, so there wasn’t a lot of prep time and I wasn’t fully happy with the wigs,” Mancuso told The Ankler. “Then I think we tried it again, and again I wasn’t happy with it. So we fully gave up on it, ‘This is not going to happen.’”
But Gosling was the glue that brought the sketch together. In it, Gosling and Day play “Beavis and Butt-head” lookalikes who distract a NewsNation Town Hall that Heidi Gardner is attempting to host. Gardner could not contain her laughter and remain in character, a rare moment of Gardner breaking.
“It feels like it was just huge release in a lot of ways for people,” Gardner told IndieWire last year. “You’re not watching ‘SNL’ in 2024 expecting to see Beavis and Butt-Head. So I think that was a fun generational thing for people to feel nostalgia.
She continued: “And then the fact that we all got the giggles, people have told me, ‘Oh, seeing you laugh that hard gave me permission to laugh that hard and just really be like, This is so stupid.’”
“When it works, it just kind of works,” Day told Variety of a sketch’s secret sauce. Day started on the 50-year-old series in 2013 as a writer. He was promoted to a series regular three seasons later.
“It’s crazy where the ideas originate,” he said of the writing process. “Sometimes, you can see something on TV that will just spark your idea, or you see a commercial, but oftentimes, I’m not really sure where this stuff comes from.”
And Day has no intention of leaving “SNL,” possibly ever.
“I want to work there for as long as I can. I want to work there until it’s sad,” he said.
Rewatch the “Beavis and Butt-head” sketch below:
