Ryan Gosling’s ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ sketch on ‘SNL’ was supposed to star Jonah Hill
Years in the making.
Two “Saturday Night Live” crew members revealed that Ryan Gosling’s hilarious “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch that aired in April was in the works for six years.
Hair stylist Jodi Mancuso and makeup artist Louie Zakarian told the Ankler on Monday that Jonah Hill was originally going to star in the bit when he hosted “SNL” in 2018.
“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,” said Mancuso, 49.
“Then I think we tried it again, and again I wasn’t happy with it,” she added. “So we fully gave up on it. This is not going to happen.”
But Mancuso said that when the sketch was pitched again, she convinced Streeter Seidell, the sketch’s writer, and Mikey Day, who played the Butt-Head to Gosling’s Beavis, that they needed to use wigs that were “a little more human.”
Meanwhile, Zakarian, 56, fought to change Beavis’ braces in the sketch.
“I made this crazy little bridge that goes into his mouth and the first time it didn’t lift his lip up enough,” he said in the interview. “This time I went in and redid it and made it a little more prominent and made it pop a little more. Just having his lip have those braces and those teeth exposed, it really did help.”
Gosling and Day, 44, starred in the “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch on the April 13 episode of the NBC late-night series — and it turned out to be a huge hit, with many fans calling it one of the best sketches in the show’s history.
The bit was so good that several “SNL” castmates, including Heidi Gardner, failed to stay in character because they were laughing so hard.
“People love when the [cast] breaks because it’s funny, right?” Mancuso said. “You don’t want to do it every time because it’s live, and you can kind of ruin someone’s sketch if it goes too long.”
“But when you have a moment like Heidi did, I mean, come on. It was funny, and it made everybody else enjoy that moment even more,” she added.
Zakarian confirmed that the cast’s off-script reactions to the sketch were “genuine.”
“They genuinely just lost it. There was no controlling it,” he said.
Mancuso added about Gardner, “In her defense, she really didn’t get to fully see this. She says she did, but we do a rehearsal, and for rehearsal, they weren’t in full costume. Mikey didn’t really have the bald cap on. She saw it, she kind of had an idea, but it wasn’t full.”
Gardner, 40, addressed breaking character during the “Beavis and Butt-Head” act in an interview with Vulture on April 15.
“I just couldn’t prepare for what I saw. I really tried,” the comedian said.
“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,” Gardner continued. “Mikey even told me later that he was bending down and hiding himself, so I wouldn’t see him.”
The “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch featured the animated duo played by Gosling and Day sitting in the audience of a panel discussion about artificial intelligence.
The bit has over 16 million views on YouTube.
