CELEBRITY
JUST IN: ‘Sorry, Taylor.’ Heidi Gardner talks about that ‘SNL’ bedroom skit with Travis Kelce- VIDEO
“Today” show co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager were shocked to hear Friday from Heidi Gardner that Travis Kelce loves to eat Uncrustables, a morsel his die-hard fans already know.
They also didn’t know that Kelce had pounded several boxes of the little snacks before he got into bed with Gardner last year … for a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
That was the episode last year that Kelce hosted, thanks to Gardner, a Kansas City native and longtime Chiefs fan who championed him to her boss, “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels.
When Bush Hager gushed over “the influence” Gardner has over Michaels, Gardner demurred.
“No, no, no,” she said.
“You say something and he says yes,” Kotb insisted.
“So much so that you said, ‘I love Travis Kelce,’ I mean, you loved him before Taylor,” Bush Hager teased.
“Yes, I guess I did. … I love him very much,” Gardner said.
They asked Gardner what Michaels said when she suggested Kelce host the show.
“He said, well he has to win the Super Bowl,” Gardner said. “And I was like, well that’s a really big ask. And then he went and won the Super Bowl.
“And then I feel like he hosted ‘SNL’ and he won ‘SNL.’ He did such a great job.”
Kelce, in fact, won great reviews for his hosting skills. He also acted in several skits with Gardner, including one that Swifties were reminded of when Kelce lifted girlfriend Taylor Swift into the air at Coachella.
“You were hyping him and you were very protective of him, you wanted him to do well,” said Kotb. “What did you do to help him out?”
Gardner responded by retelling a story she shared on a podcast earlier this year.
“I was very protective,” Gardner said. “I asked him questions, which also as a sports fan I’m just interested in, but I was like, ‘On game day, what do you eat?’ And he was like, ‘Uncrustables. I’m just pounding Uncrustables.’
“Uncrustables,” Kotb and Bush Hager exclaimed at once. Crew members off-camera laughed.
“Even during the games,” Gardner said of those round, pre-made sandwiches by Smucker’s filled with kid-friendly strawberry jam or grape jelly.
“And so the Saturday of the show, I went to the store, I got Uncrustables. I was like, I want this to feel as much like home as it can.
“But it was cool, right before dress rehearsal, we were in a scene where we were — sorry, Taylor — we were in bed together …”
“Oh! Did you have a crush … No? No crush on him?” Bush Hager asked.
“No,” Gardner laughed. “But he leaned over into me right before lights up on the scene and said ‘I’ve been eating Uncrustables all day.’ And I was like, cool.”
“You are so fan-girling, geeking out over him,” Kotb teased. “I love it.”
Gardner was also asked about last summer when she lived in Kansas City with friends during the Writers Guild of America strike that shut down Hollywood for five months.
The downtime “gave me this chance to just go home, go to Kansas City, be there the entire summer and feel like a kid again,” Gardner said.
She lived with three of her best friends in the house they share.
“And we were like ‘The Real World’ house,” she said. “My age, I wouldn’t think that roommates would really work.
“But every morning we got up, we made coffee before they went to work, and we just had conversations.”
Last June, she also co-hosted, for the first time, the annual Big Slick Celebrity Weekend fundraiser for Children’s Mercy. This year’s event will be May 31-June 1.