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‘SNL’ Newcomer Replaces Heidi Gardner in Popular Sketch

Fans have speculated that Ashley Padilla will be a major “SNL” player in the coming years.

The latest episode of Saturday Night Live featured “Shop TV,” a recurring sketch about two uptight Christian hosts who talk to religious entrepreneurs selling their latest products.

The running joke is always that their main guest is obliviously selling a product with a clear sexual aesthetic. This rattles the hosts, who want to keep the show family-friendly but don’t want to admit what the product reminds them of.

Tonight’s sketch once again featured Mikey Day as Rhett, but his usual co-host Lindy (Heidi Gardner) was replaced by Bev, played by Ashley Padilla.

Padilla is a second-season SNL cast member. Although she didn’t have many major breakout roles in her first season, fans have often highlighted her as the most promising new cast member in years.

Padilla’s effortless ability to stand in for Gardner, a well-liked cast member who left unexpectedly after Season 50, implies good things about Padilla’s growing prominence on the show.

Throughout the sketch, Padilla’s character is concerned and appalled by the product Sabrina Carpenter’s character is selling: a neck pillow that’s unwittingly shaped exactly like female genitalia.

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The very first “Shop TV” sketch aired in April 2022, with Cecily Strong serving as Rhett’s co-host Dot. Strong was one of the most commonly featured cast members of the show that year, second only to Kate McKinnon.

It was only in the second “Shop TV” sketch, where Gardner took on the co-host role, that the sketches truly became popular. Gardner’s first “Shop TV” has 3 million views on the show’s official YouTube page, compared to the first sketch’s 850,000.

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