Heidi Gardner began her comedy career later than many peers, working nearly a decade as a hairstylist before training with the Groundlings and joining Saturday Night Live in 2017. Her observational skills and timing enabled her to create outsize but recognizably human characters. She performed eight seasons of physical comedy, strong straight-woman reactions, and notable "Weekend Update" solos before departing after the show's 50th anniversary. Gardner has appeared in other series, earning laughs on Girls5Eva and a recurring role on Shrinking. Her varied memorable bits and reliable sketch performances establish a legacy as a clutch character player poised for further character work.
Heidi Gardner came to comedy later than some of her Saturday Night Live colleagues. Rather than jumping straight from college to an improv-class version of grad school to SNL auditions, she worked for nearly a decade as a hairstylist before auditioning for the Groundlings and eventually landing on the NBC sketch-comedy show in 2017. Maybe it was her extra time spent in the non-performing world that allowed her to hone her observational skills; regardless, Gardner quickly established herself as the kind
"Every movie about [subject] ever" is too often an uninspired prompt for grimacingly smug and unfunny TikTok comedy. But in Gardner's case, she goes weirdly and brilliantly deep with this particular movie cliché, from the styling (long wavy hair, low-cut tank top) to the accented voice perpetually teetering on the edge of tears to the application of stock responses to unrelated topics (on the new iPhone announcement: "I don't give up on my phone after a year").
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