Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim on ‘challenging’ environment at ‘SNL’
After leaving ‘Saturday Night Live’ before season 51, Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim opened up about the work culture on the iconic late-night sketch show.
While he hosted Gardner on her Podcast ‘Thanks Dad’Nwodim said that the cast of “SNL” has to spend a lot of “intimate” time together writing and rehearsing, which can bring everyone together or breed contempt within the group.
“To have to share such an intimate space together for hours on Saturday, Thursday and Friday when we were rehearsing, yes, it brought us close quickly,” Nwodim explained. “But it doesn’t have to work that way. It also can’t make you bond. It can make you stop liking each other. It can give you a mutual feeling: ‘I’m sharing a space with this person.’ But I’m so grateful that we got so close.”
Gardner added that she was grateful for the friendship she and Nwodim built on the show and was grateful that egos never got in the way.
“I’m so honored that we worked so hard there, and then we worked so hard on our friendship, which wasn’t hard by the way,” Gardner said. “I just mean we’re human, so we have egos, we want things for ourselves, we want to succeed. It’s not often that we’ve been able to succeed the way we wanted to at exactly the same time.”
Later in the discussion, Nwodim said it can be challenging to feel like the cast of “SNL” is “winning together,” which, among other things, makes the show “not the easiest place to work.” However, she praised Gardner for being “so light in what can be such a challenging place.”
She added: “But I think if you can leave – in a place where it can get so competitive and you can get so involved with yourself, if you can leave and still be remarkably sweet and so light and still flow to other people like you, then I think you’ve succeeded.”
Gardner revealed her departure from “SNL” on August 28 after eight seasons on the show, while Nwodim left on September 12 after her seventh. The cast of “SNL” had a major shakeup before season 51, with Devon Walker, Emil Wakim and Michael Longfellow all leaving the show. Please Don’t Destroy member Ben Marshall was pulled into the main cast, while Martin Herlihy moved to writers and John Higgins left the show.
