Heidi Gardner knew it would be tough getting Travis Kelce onto Saturday Night Live as a host, but she never expected Lorne Michaels to make it quite so difficult.
“The biggest swing I ever did in that department, and it did work, but it took a couple years, was Travis Kelce,” Gardner recounted on an episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast. “I don’t want to take full credit from the show and the talent department, but I’m just, obviously a big Chiefs fan, and I had seen him do like other little acting gigs and appearances, and I was like, ‘He’s funny, he’s charming.’ I had done the ESPYs with him, announcing something together.”
Gardner said she kept pressing the casting department to consider the Kansas City Chiefs star player until SNL boss Michaels threw down the gauntlet. “Lorne was like, ‘Well, he has to win the Super Bowl.’ I was like, ‘That is so much pressure to ask!’ And then he won the Super Bowl!”
Garnder was quick to point out that her Kelce campaign was “pre-Taylor,” as in, occurred prior to Kelce’s relationship with pop superstar Taylor Swift. The relationship launched Kelce to a new stratosphere of fame and recognition (to the point where Chiefs games’ ticket sales routinely experienced surges of over 100%), a fact that many have retroactively applied to his announcement as an SNL host.
But Kelce hosted the March 4, 2023, episode of the long-running sketch comedy program; Kelce and Swift didn’t start dating until September of that year. “His talents were already on their way,” Gardner assured.
Gardner was born and raised in Kansas City, the heart and soul of Chiefs country. In honor of the helping bring her hometown hero to Studio 8H, Gardner shared that “all my family came in for the show, all my friends. I got barbecue. We tailgated in the dressing room before the show.”
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She said she repeatedly told Kelce and his brother Jason, a center for the rival Eagles, “‘I’m going to have a tailgate in my room,’ because at Arrowhead Stadium, it’s famous for tailgating.” Though she assumed the busy brothers wouldn’t have time to come. When they sent a gift of canned tequila sodas to her dressing room ahead of time, she took it as a thank you for her hospitality, but a no thank you to the tailgate.
Then she got a text.
“So my brothers are getting there,” Gardner explained. “They’re texting me like, ‘We’re in!’ My best friend Michelle, people are getting there. And then I get another text. I open it. It’s a picture of Travis and Jason Kelce in my dressing room eating barbecue. I’m like, ‘They’re tailgating! They’re here.'”
Gardner figures Kelce is “the only host in SNL history that’s ever tailgated before hosting the show,” a record that would be hard to fact check, though if eating barbecue and getting tipsy before a taping of the show counts as tailgating Kelce probably wouldn’t even crack the first 50.
Kelce received warm notices for his appearance on SNL, starring in memorable sketches with Bowen Yang (“Straight Male Friend”) and Gardner (“Abby the Ex-Girlfriend,” which also featured Sarah Sherman, Ego Nwodim, and Chloe Fineman). Having scored a major touchdown on that host pick, Gardner put forth Patrick Mahomes, LeBron James, Catherine O’Hara, and Nicolas Cage as future dream hosts.
Listen to Gardner’s full interview on Not Skinny But Not Fat above.
