Ryan Gosling is making the dreams of “Saturday Night Live” writers come true.
In addition to reprising his iconic role for a sequel to skit “Papyrus,” penned by Julio Torres, it’s now been revealed that Gosling’s viral “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch was a shelved idea from 2018, with Jonah Hill originally being set to portray one half of the cartoon-character duo.
“SNL” hair stylist Jodi Mancuso and makeup artist Louie Zakarian both told The Ankler that the skit was originally pitched when Jonah Hill was hosting a Season 44 episode in November 2018. However, it was canceled due to challenges with the necessary prosthetics.
“Even at that time it was late coming into the show, so there wasn’t a lot of prep time and I wasn’t fully happy with the wigs,” Mancuso said. “Then I think we tried it again, and again I wasn’t happy with it. So we fully gave up on it, ‘This is not going to happen.’”
Yet by April 2024 with Gosling and “SNL” star Mikey Day, the sketch became fully realized.
“Even at dress rehearsal, I think he was only like 85 percent there,” Zakarian said of Day’s costume and bald cap. “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.”
Both Gosling and Day later re-donned the prosthetics for Gosling’s “The Fall Guy” premiere.
Former “SNL” writer Torres told Entertainment Weekly that Gosling had more than a few sketch ideas when he returned to host, which included Torres reviving their viral “Papyrus” sequence that parodied the font used in James Cameron’s “Avatar.”
“With no Ryan Gosling, there’s no ‘Papyrus 1,’ and there’s no ‘Papyrus 2,’” Torres said. “He was like, ‘Should we make a sequel?’ and at first I was like, why? But then I started thinking about it. I wrote it, and then I was like, ‘Yeah, he’s bringing this to life yet again.’ I love actors who are in themselves world builders, and he is that for sure. It’s a dramatic role.”
Torres added, “The first one was this sort of throwaway joke I made that he really latched on to. He was like, ‘Oh, I think maybe there’s an idea there,’ and I was like, ‘I really don’t think so.’ I didn’t tell him that, but I really didn’t think so. But then I wrote it, and I was like, ‘Oh, no, I think this could work. And then when I saw him perform it, I was like, ‘Oh, this definitely works.’”
Read IndieWire’s interview with “SNL” star Heidi Gardner about how the Beavis and Butthead sketch came to be. Or if you prefer the backstory to Nate Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketch, we’ve got that too.
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