Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim aren’t done writing sketches together. The former Saturday Night Live castmates wrote and star in a new ad for beauty brand Merit.
In the short, Gardner and Nwodim find themselves on a game show called The Five Minute Face-Off—though they initially mistake the setting for the afterlife.
“All you have to do is get ready in just five minutes,” a smart-speaker-like host instructs them.
“With our glam teams?” Gardner asks.
“On your own,” the speaker explains.
“Yeah, that’s gonna be a problem,” Nwodim admits.
“Now I’m low-key wishing we were dead,” she adds as she rushes through a makeup routine.
While the duo get ready, they’re thrown obstacles like dozens of notifications and a deadline to get their daily steps in.
Meanwhile, they struggle to figure out who the familiar voice is coming from the speaker. Gardner insists it’s her dad, while Nwodim pegs it as her gynecologist.
“Wait, is my dad your gynecologist?” Gardner asks Nwodim.
The team-up comes just weeks after the duo reunited on Heidi Gardner’s newly relaunched podcast, Thanks Dad. Gardner and Nwodim spent seven seasons on SNL together before they each unexpectedly departed ahead of the new season. Since exiting, Nwodim has already starred in an ad for boutique fitness brand Solidcore. On the branded side, Gardner was most recently seen in a Super Bowl campaign for Homes.com.
Of course, both actresses are busy with non-ad work as well. Gardner just booked a role in Scary Movie 6 and is set to make her Broadway debut in Simon Rich’s All Out, while Nwodim has signed onto a new Hulu series from Mindy Kaling.
Earlier this week, Merit teased the release of the video with an image of pinned-up index cards, paying homage to SNL’s episode lineup announcements.
