Heidi Gardner Reveals the One Condition Travis Kelce Had to Meet to Host Saturday Night Live

Forget Disney World, Travis Kelce’s 2023 Super Bowl win earned him a different post-game activity. Saturday Night Live’s Heidi Gardner revealed her role in getting the athlete to take the stage.

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Travis Kelce, you’ve just won the Super Bowl. What are you going to do next? I’m going to Disney World New York!

The Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end to reporters in 2023, probably.

Because, as proud Kansas City native and longtime Saturday Night Live castmember Heidi Gardner recently revealed, the NFL star’s win against his brother Jason Kelce’s Philadelphia Eagles clinched his March 2023 hosting gig months before he went public with now-girlfriend Taylor Swift.

“The biggest swing I ever did in that department, and it did work, but it took a couple years, was Travis Kelce,” Gardner recalled on a December episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast when asked about her input into the NBC sketch show’s hosts. “I don’t want to take full credit from the show and the talent department, but I am obviously a big Chiefs fan, and I had seen him do other little acting gigs and appearances and I was like, ‘He’s funny, he’s charming.'”

SNL creator Lorne Michaels agreed to try the trick play—under one condition: He had to win the Super Bowl.

Though Gardner acknowledged, “I was like, ‘That is so much pressure to ask,'” of course the nine-time Pro Bowler—who also ran away with victories in 2020 and 2024—was game.

Said Gardner, “Then he won the Super Bowl.”

Less than three weeks later, the 35-year-old took to the stage. But not without first assisting in Gardner’s epic pre-game.

Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images

“I was like, ‘I’m gonna have a tailgate in my room’ because Arrowhead Stadium is famous for tailgating,” she revealed of the barbecue she threw in her dressing room.

“That morning, he was so nice. Jeff, one of our guys in the talent department knocked on my dressing room, and I opened it, and he had these cans of tequila sodas,” the Shrinking star continued of Kelce. “He’s like, these are from Travis for the tailgate.”

Still, she didn’t expect to actually huddle up with the athlete because of the tight turnaraound between dress rehearsal and going live from New York.

“I had run to go get my makeup done before the live show, and that’s when your guests that’ll be in your dressing room start arriving,” Gardner explained. “So my brothers are getting there. They’re texting me like, ‘We’re in.’ My best friend, Michelle—people are getting there. I’m just like, ‘Oh, cool. It’s gonna be a great show. I’m just getting my make-up,’ and then I get another text.”

This one was simply a photo of both the tight end and his brother eating barbecue in her dressing room.

Cracked Gardner, “I just know for a fact that’s the only host in SNL history that’s ever tailgated before hosting.”

The other Xs and Os that went into Kelce having a successful show? Gardner rushing out to procure his go-to pre-game fuel.

“I was very protective,” she explained during a May appearance on Today. “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.'”

So she snagged a few of the peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches for him. Explained Gardner, “I was like, ‘I want this to feel as much like home as it can.”