TV Jonah Hill was offered the Beavis and Butt-Head SNL sketch first way back in 2018 It was a long, Cornholio'd road to the instant classic starring Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day as the cartoon duo's real-life doppelgangers. By Lester Fabian Brathwaite Lester Fabian Brathwaite Lester Fabian Brathwaite is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, where he covers breaking news, all things Real Housewives, and a rich cornucopia of popular culture. Formerly a senior editor at Out magazine, his work has appeared on NewNowNext, Queerty, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker. He was also the first author signed to Phoebe Robinson's Tiny Reparations imprint. He met Oprah once. EW's editorial guidelines Published on June 4, 2024 10:31PM EDT Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day as Beavis and Butt-Head ranks hight atop the list of Saturday Night Live's greatest moments this year, and to think we almost didn't have it. In another timeline, somewhere scattered among the multiverse, Jonah Hill might have played one half of Mike Judge's animated duo. Mikey Day and Ryan Gosling on 'SNL'; Jonah Hill. Will Heath/NBC; getty Heidi Gardner was afraid to break character on Saturday Night Live because 'I thought I'd get fired' SNL makeup designer Louie Zakarian and hairstylist Jodi Mancuso revealed that Hill was first offered the sketch back in 2018 when he hosted the show, but Mancuso kept wiggin' out. "Even at that time [the sketch] was late coming into the show, so there wasn't a lot of prep time and I wasn't fully happy with the wigs. Then I think we tried it again, and again I wasn't happy with it," Mancuso told The Ankler. Mancuso continued, "So we fully gave up on it, this is not going to happen. Then they pitched it again and I was like, 'Well, we're going to make this right.'" Heh heh! Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day return as SNL Beavis and Butt-Head characters at The Fall Guy premiere Both Day and the sketch's writer Streeter Seidell wanted "the same exact wigs as the first time," but Mancuso disagreed — she wanted to make them "a little more human." She eventually got her way, and thankfully so. "Streeter was against it the whole time and I said, too bad, I'm going to trust myself on this one," she added. Zakarian also sweated the details when it came to perfecting the looks of these characters, including getting Day's Butt-Head-inspired cleft lip just right. Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more. Taylor Swift reacts to Ryan Gosling's SNL Barbenheimer break up with Ken to 'All Too Well' "I made this crazy little bridge that goes into his mouth and the first time it didn't lift his lip up enough," he said. "This time I went in and redid it and made it a little more prominent and made it pop a little more. Just having his lip have those braces and those teeth exposed, it really did help." Day's teeth might have proven Heidi Gardner's downfall. Gardner couldn't help but break when she turned around mid-sketch and saw Day as Butt-Head because it was her first time seeing the completed look. Mancuso said Day and Gosling weren't in full costume for the rehearsal, though Gardner "kind of had an idea" about what they would look like. How Kenan Thompson kept it together during SNL's Beavis and Butt-Head sketch: 'Just chaos' "Even at dress rehearsal, I think he was only like 85 percent there," Zakarian added. "I tweaked the makeup a little bit, I think Jodi moved the wig back a little bit on him. For air, it was dead on." "The dress rehearsal was when the prosthetics made their debut — the noses and the mouths," Gardner explained to Vulture back in April. "I didn’t know about Mikey’s exposed gums and teeth." Though she had seen Day before going live and had tried to prepare for the moment, Gardner admitted, "I just couldn’t prepare for what I saw." And lucky us, as her reaction was priceless — even if she thought she was going to get fired.