When she isn’t making audiences laugh on “Saturday Night Live,” she’s hanging out with girlfriends, admiring the flowers at 30 Rock and cheering for the Kansas City Chiefs.
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By Chris Kornelis
Heidi Gardner has developed a knack for portraying women in troubled relationships, dialing up the melodrama until she gets a laugh. On “Saturday Night Live,” where she has been a cast member since 2017, she sometimes plays Angel, “every boxer’s girlfriend from every movie about boxing ever,” according to the show’s Weekend Update anchors, who is perpetually threatening to take the kids to her sister’s.
“I was around a lot of interesting characters growing up that were going through pretty intense things in life,” Gardner, 39, said in a phone interview last month. “But when that’s your life, there’s some comedy in that, too.”
The same can be said of the Apple TV+ series “Shrinking,” which stars Jason Segel as a grieving therapist. One of his patients is Gardner’s Grace, who is in an abusive relationship. Both of them get plenty of chuckles.
“I happen to find a lot of comedy in tragedy,” she said.
Gardner, who grew up in Kansas City, Mo., talked about her go-to comedian, the decades-old TV show she discovered during the pandemic and why Easter candy is the best candy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
1
Brownies From a Box
Foods are constantly being elevated, but I never want a brownie that’s not from a box. When I have a brownie that’s from outside of the box, I’m like, yeah, this just isn’t it. And I have a feeling that most people agree with me. A brownie is to be made at home from a box with burnt crispy edges. Yeah, try and elevate it, but the box is still going to be better.
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