As Ashley Padilla soaks up well-deserved acclaim for her tour de force turn as a flatulent woman on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live, show veteran Steve Higgins made a crucial—but unseen—contribution: every single fart.
Higgins supplied the gas soundtrack for “Surprise,” a sketch where Padilla’s character can’t stop breaking wind in front of her coworkers (Andrew Dismukes, Ben Marshall, Sarah Sherman, and Sabrina Carpenter). Each blast? Pure Higgins.
It’s not the first time the longtime SNL producer has taken on such an uncredited (but hardly silent) role. For years, Higgins has doubled as the show’s unofficial “fartist.” While he’s best known for being Jimmy Fallon’s announcer on The Tonight Show, Higgins has also long been SNL’s go-to guy for voiceovers, end tags—and, when necessary, live flatulence.
Stationed in the announce booth, Higgins crafts each fart live with his mouth, ensuring no two toots are alike. In “Surprise,” the audio shifts from one sputter to the next—so distinct that even the sketch’s dress rehearsal and live versions featured different gaseous notes.
SNL has occasionally pulled back the curtain on Higgins’ peculiar artistry. In 2017, the show released a behind-the-scenes look him scoring “Gym Class,” another fart-forward sketch. As Mikey Day played a gassy student doing sit-ups, Higgins blew raspberries into the mic, twisted his mouth for tonal precision, and struggled not to laugh at his own work. (Some of those farts are literally Higgins trying not to lose it.)
No one seems to know when Higgins first lent his wind to Saturday Night Live, but he’s been with the show for three decades—joining as a writing supervisor in 1995 and adding producer duties the following year.
Just last week, Higgins passed SNL legend Phil Hartman to claim the second-most sketch appearances in show history, according to LateNighte’s podcast partner, The Saturday Night Network. Not bad for a man whose greatest hits are mostly hot air.
He’s also provided some flatulence sounds on the Tonight Show, usually as an attempt to make Fallon crack during the monologue or at the end of performing other sound effects that Jimmy is acting out.