Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner have reunited in a tearful conversation months after their sudden exits from Saturday Night Live.
The comedians and best friends got vulnerable speaking about their friendship and their experiences on NBC’s sketch comedy show during Tuesday’s episode of Nwodim’s podcast, Thanks Dad With Ego Nwodim.
“Getting to spend seven years of my time on SNL with you [was] one of life’s greatest gifts,” Nwodim, 37, told Gardner, 42. “It’s not the easiest place to work, but you were such a huge gift, and I absolutely adore and love you and am so grateful for that time.”
Gardner responded, “I am so honored that we worked so hard there, and then we also worked on our friendship so hard, which wasn’t hard, by the way. I just mean we’re humans, so we have egos, we want things for ourselves, we want to succeed, and there weren’t a lot of times when we were able to succeed in the way we wanted at the exact same time.”
She then broke into tears as she recalled being proud of Nwodim for having the “moment of the season” with the viral “Miss Eggy” moment during Jack Black’s episode in April, calling her “my favorite person in the world.”
Nwodim then said it’s “easy to get caught up” in jealousy and ambition while working at SNL, but that Gardner was always gracious about her successes. “There's just nobody like you and you were just such a light in what can be such a challenging place to so many people,” Nwodim said.
Earlier in the episode, Nwodim and Gardner recalled how they quickly became friends due to a shared dressing room, where they bonded over earnest conversations and naps on their small couch.
“We got right into it, we went really deep, really fast, which I'm known for — even in romance,” Nwodim said about their first week together on set.
“One of us got called to the floor to rehearse a silly sketch, and it’s like, OK, I just told you everything about my life. And the thing you said to me is, I was called to exit, you were like, ‘Well, that’s more than I know about anyone who works here, and I’ve been here more than a year.’”
Gardner and Nwodim, who respectively starred on the show for eight and seven years, left the SNL cast after season 50 ended. While Gardner hasn’t spoken publicly about her exit, Nwodim announced her departure last month.
“The hardest part of a great party is knowing when to say goodnight,” she said on Instagram.
The longstanding cast members were two of the most shocking exits in the massive cast shake-up, which also saw departures from Devon Walker, Emil Wakim, and Michael Longfellow.
