Heidi Gardner Exits ‘SNL’ After 8 Seasons

Heidi Gardner has taken her final bow on the Saturday Night Live stage and will not be returning for season 51.

The comedian, 42, is exiting SNL after eight seasons, according to multiple outlets. Gardner, for her part, still has SNL’s official Instagram handle listed in her social media bio and has not publicly announced her departure.

Us Weekly reached out to NBC for comment.

Gardner’s alleged exit comes after Devon Walker and Emil Wakim confirmed their respective departures. It was reported earlier on Thursday that Michael Longfellow would also not be back for another season.

The news also comes after creator Lorne Michaels teased that season 51 would feature a few changes following the historic season 50 celebrations earlier this year.

“Last season, when we were at the party of the first show, quarter of four in the morning, Dana [Carvey, who played Joe Biden] comes over to me and says, ‘I don’t think anyone knows you called me June 4th [to play Biden].’ I wanted people coming back and being part of [the 50th season],” Michaels recalled to Puck in a Sunday, August 24, interview. “So when Kate [McKinnon] hosted, Kristen [Wiig] and Maya [Rudolph] came back for it. And that meant there couldn’t be those kind of disruptions [to the cast], or anything that was going to take the focus off [the 50th season]. And we had an election.”

Gardner joined SNL in 2017. Throughout her eight seasons on the sketch comedy show, Gardner originated beloved characters such as teen film critic Bailey Gismert and Angel a.k.a. “Every Boxer’s Girlfriend From Every Movie About Boxing Ever.”

SNL has catapulted Gardner into a steady acting career as well, including starring in 2018’s Life of the Party, 2022’s Hustle and voicing Eli’s mom in 2023’s Leo.

Gardner began playing Grace on AppleTV+’s Shrinking in 2023 and had a guest starring role on You earlier this year.

Ahead of her departure, Gardner confessed that working on SNL can get repetitive.

“I will say the only thing that I’ve started to feel a little bit is just sketch fatigue, or idea fatigue,” she confessed during a February episode of Craig Ferguson’s “Joy, a Podcast” podcast. “At this point, after doing Groundlings and SNL for so long, I’m like, ‘I’ve written a lot of sketches.’”

Gardner explained, “It does happen some weeks where I’m like, ‘I do not have an idea for a sketch, a game, or a character.’ Luckily, we have amazing writers at the show that will be like, ‘But I have an idea for you.’ That’s the only thing that has gotten a little tough.”

She insisted at the time that she did still “love playing characters” and was aware SNL was the only place she could take on personas to “this degree.”

Gardner also hinted at her future plans, telling podcast listeners, “I know whatever I do next … I’d love to have a show that I costar in and cowrite, and it’s a character and it’s a world. And it’s a character I get to live in for a while and explore more.”

Saturday Night Live returns for season 51 on NBC Saturday, October 4, at 11:30 p.m. ET.