Ahead of its 51st season, Saturday Night Live saw some major casting shake-ups, including notable exits by Celeste Yim and Heidi Gardner, who announced she would be leaving the sketch show after eight seasons.
Following the announcement, Bowen Yang, who will be returning for his sixth season, voiced support for his closest friends who won’t be coming back, including Gardner. In the most recent episode of his podcast Las Culturistas, which he cohosts with best friend Matt Rogers, Yang said that the sketch show vet is "one of the greats" and that she "will go down in history."
After saying that he will "miss the people who are not coming back very, very much," Bowen described how Gardner was in a league of her own and was trusted to write sketches for the show without a cowriter. "It's always a very, very vulnerable thing as a cast member to put only your name on it. There's just something in the room that just kind of shifts," he said. "But anytime you saw just 'Gardner,' you knew you were in good hands."
The comedian and actor, who is gearing up for a second Wicked press tour, went on to tell Rogers how Gardner would take it upon herself to write sketches for other cast members and how one of his favorite moments was when she wrote a "Weekend Update" feature for Punkie Johnson, who exited the show in 2024.
"It was one of the most beautiful, kindest gestures I've ever seen at that show. And her heart was so big, and clearly [she was] so fucking funny," Yang said of Gardner, calling her a "true anchor on that show" and "just a truly beautiful person."
The upcoming season of SNL has a lot of eyes on it following the news of Gardner and her fellow castmates' departures and the announcement of the season's new crop of comedians — many of which got their start on social media platforms like TikTok.
