Saturday Night Live continues to hemorrhage cast members as another star departs the comedy show.
After three performers announced this week that they would not return for SNL’s 51st season, multiple outlets reported that Heidi Gardner is also leaving after eight seasons.
Gardner, the most prominent name in the cast shake-up so far, follows the exits of Devon Walker, Emil Wakim and Michael Longfellow.
The bloodbath extends beyond the cast to the writers room. Celeste Yim, the show’s first out trans writer, announced they were leaving the show after five seasons, while stand-up comedian Rosebud Baker also revealed she wouldn’t be returning.
Gardner, 42, joined the show in 2017 and was promoted to the main cast in 2019, appearing in memorable skits such as “Beavis and Butt-Head,” in which she and host Ryan Gosling could not stop breaking, and last season’s most-watched skit, “Domingo: Bridesmaid Speech.”
She also became known for her impression of Jill Biden, and played Kim Kardashian, Kristi Noem, and Taylor Swift among others. She was the longest-tenured current female cast member last season.
SNL’s executive producer Lorne Michaels, 80, hinted he was making significant changes to the show in an interview with Puck News last week, saying he was feeling “the pressure to reinvent” after the show’s 50th season.
Walker, 34, was the first cast member to go, announcing his departure after three seasons in a cryptic Instagram post Monday. He claimed that SNL was sometimes “toxic as hell,” and didn’t divulge whether he quit on his own account.
On Wednesday, Wakim, a 27-year-old newcomer, revealed that he’d been fired in his own Instagram post, saying it was a “gut punch of a call to get but I’m so grateful for my time there.”
Wakim’s exit was followed by Thursday’s news that Longfellow, 31, was leaving as well.
“Will not be returning for a 4th season at SNL. Wish I was but, so it goes,” Longfellow, who spent three seasons on the show, wrote on Instagram.
“It was the best three years of my life so far. I feel nothing but gratitude for the experience and everyone there. Lorne, you gave me the greatest job in the world and changed my life.”
Gardner’s career beyond SNL has already taken off: she appeared in Adam Sandler’s 2022 movie Hustle, and currently stars in Shrinking, sharing the screen with Harrison Ford and Jason Segel across the show’s first two seasons.
The Daily Beast reached out to Gardner’s representatives for comment.
