Ego Nwodim & Heidi Gardner Say 'Saturday Night Live' Was 'Not the Easiest Place to Work'

Former Saturday Night Live stars Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner are opening up about what it was really like to work at the long-running sketch comedy show following their recent exits.

Heidi, 42, visited the Thanks Dad pocast hosted by Ego, 37, on Tuesday (October 28). The two stars both exited SNL before the current season, the 51st overall.

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They got candid about the challenges of working on SNL, revealing that it was “not the easiest place to work.”

“The sketches, they come, they go, they’re really fun. They can be hard, they can be things you’re not into, whatever,” Ego said. “But I’m like, if you can leave — in a place where it can get so competitive and you can become so self involved, if you can leave and be still remarkably lovely and such a light and still pouring into other people like you, I think you succeeded.”

However, the pair got along well and bonded “instantly.”

“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,” said the Shrinking star, “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.”

Heidi left first, over the summer, after eight seasons, and then Ego departed in September after seven.

While the NBC show is ongoing, Ego has landed an exciting Off-Broadway gig!