NEW YORK — The very first thing you might be more likely to surprise about Tom Broecker, who has spent greater than 30 years because the costume designer at “Saturday Night Live,” is whether or not he ever sleeps. Certainly, he does — however not a lot. Broecker says he averages about 5 hours an evening, and tends to get extra shut-eye earlier within the week.
However from Wednesday evening, when government producer Lorne Michaels selects which sketches can be shifting ahead after the preliminary desk learn, till the forged waves goodnight on what’s technically Sunday morning, it’s a mad, sleep-deprived sprint. For every episode of “SNL,” Broecker oversees the workforce that creates costumes for 12 to fifteen sketches, of which 10 to 12 in the end make it to air.
He’s performed an integral half within the visible language of “SNL,” shaping its funniest moments, from the ribbed V-neck sweater that clung to Will Ferrell’s midsection within the legendary “More Cowbell” sketch to the shiny rolls of simulated hippo flesh Bowen Yang wore to play Moo Deng on “Weekend Update” final fall.
The job has introduced him in shut contact with legendary film stars, musicians, athletes and politicians, and given him a front-row seat for iconic moments in popular culture historical past. But even because the present celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with a reside, all-star particular Sunday on NBC, Broecker shouldn’t be one to spend so much of time trying again.
“I’m not a nostalgic person. That doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings — although most people will tell you I don’t have feelings,” he says with a wry chortle. “The trap with nostalgia is that it keeps you in the past. It keeps you in a place of warmth and comfort and this show is not about that. This show is about constantly pushing forward to the next thing. You bring it up, you take it down, you bring it up, you take it down. That is what this show is: ever-evolving, ever moving forward.”
This philosophy extends to the hours of labor he places into numerous sketches that by no means get seen by anybody outdoors of Studio 8H. After a long time at “SNL,” Broecker has mastered what he calls “the art of detachment.”
“The art of detachment doesn’t mean that you don’t do your job 1,000%,” he says. “It just means you have to learn how to invest without emotionally getting connected to the thing too much.”
Chloe Fineman, left, Dana Carvey and Ariana Grande every dressed as Jennifer Coolidge in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. It’s one of many many costumes Tom Broecker and his workforce assembled.
(Will Heath/NBC)
‘Everything is changing all the time’
A couple of days after Timothée Chalamet’s double act as host and musical visitor, Broecker is perched in his workplace at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. A couple of yards in a single path is Studio 8H; instantly across the nook is the management room. This geographically central location displays Broecker’s significance at “SNL,” the place he has additionally served as a producer since Season 43.
Broecker is “in all the meetings where decisions are being made,” Michaels says. “The writers just assume Tom and his team can do anything. They don’t know how all that works. They just know if your piece gets picked, go to Tom. He gives it both the visual unity and the brilliance. He’s very sympathetic to carrying out the vision of what a writer or a performer is really trying to do.”
He not solely understands design, Michaels says, however how it may be used to raise a sketch: “He’ll make sure the comedy has a friend that understands what they’re trying to.”
The present is darkish this week, so the halls are deceptively empty. However Broecker’s workspace is brimming with indicators of exercise linked to the present’s fiftieth anniversary: procuring luggage piled beneath his desk, material swatches splayed on a cork board, a rack heaving with clothes together with the velvet jackets reserved for members of the “Five-Timers Club.”
From an inside window in his workplace, Broecker’s desk overlooks the world generally known as “Main Street,” the central hall connecting the studio to the backstage hive that thrums with managed chaos each Saturday evening. The hallway is lined with seemingly strange black cupboards that open to turn into cubicles the place forged members scramble to get into (and out of) their costumes between sketches. (They every have an assigned dresser to assist them.) Some forged members enhance their cubicles, that are lined with full-length mirrors, like highschool lockers. (Yang’s sales space encompasses a photograph of a French bulldog and stickers with line drawings of Patti Smith and John Lennon.)
“Most of us like routines. They are helpful to us especially when everything is changing all the time,” Broecker says of the cubicles.
Broecker sheepishly admits he wasn’t all the time an enormous fan of “SNL.” He vaguely remembers watching the episode hosted by Madonna in 1985, however in any other case, “I grew up on Carol Burnett,” he says.
He began on “SNL” as a manufacturing assistant in 1986, with a forged that included legends within the making corresponding to Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks. After just a few seasons, he left to review design at Yale, then returned to the present in 1994. He’s remained there since, with occasional aspect hustles on initiatives like “30 Rock” (the place he additionally did some appearing, enjoying a fancy dress designer on “The Girlie Show”) and “House of Cards.”
Over the a long time, know-how has made some features of his job simpler. When he first labored at “SNL,” one among his common duties was going to the New York Public Library on Thursday morning to conduct analysis for the costume designer. Now, he can pull up visible references with a fast Google search. Different know-how, like 3D printers, have made it attainable to re-create objects like classic belt buckles that show inconceivable to search out. There’s a centralized digital archive the place, with just a few clicks, he can lookup any sketch carried out within the reside present or gown rehearsal since 1975.
Tom Broecker first labored as a manufacturing assistant on “Saturday Night Live” earlier than leaving to attend Yale. He returned in 1994 and has labored there ever since.
(Rosalind O’Connor/NBC)
However through the years, the present has additionally grown extra formidable and manufacturing values have soared. There’s now a movie division that creates cinematic pretaped segments in a matter of days. When he first labored at “SNL,” the costume division consisted of 4 folks. Now there are greater than a dozen folks on the design workforce alone.
His work begins in earnest on Wednesday nights. The read-through ends round 8 p.m. Then, government producer Michaels whittles a pile of 40 or so sketches right down to about 15 — possibly 10 that everybody agrees on, plus one other 5 outliers. Round 10 p.m., as soon as the picks have been made, Broecker and his workforce will talk to the writers to provide you with concepts for costumes. He usually sketches immediately on the script pages, which he prefers to print out though they’re distributed on iPads.
“That’s when it all really begins to take shape,” Broecker says.
From sketch to diner lobster
On a large whiteboard within the wardrobe division is a grid itemizing the sketches for the week and who’s starring in them. If a forged member is slated to seem in a sketch, there’s an X beneath their identify. Crimson ink signifies they’re enjoying an actual particular person (e.g. Lionel Richie); blue signifies a recurring character.
On Thursday, he will get in round 7:30 or 8 a.m. and does a breakdown of the costumes for every sketch earlier than a 9 a.m. assembly together with his workforce. They spend many of the day assembling the appears to be like for the week — procuring at shops like Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, renting from high-quality classic homes, creating appears to be like from scratch, or pulling clothes from the present’s huge costume closet.
Kenan Thompson in “Diner Lobster,” a “Les Misérables” musical parody. To determine the costume, Broecker introduced a cooked lobster for his workforce to reference.
(Will Heath/NBC)
A lot of Broecker’s work entails determining how a fancy dress can improve a joke as an alternative of overwhelming it. Generally inspiration comes from sudden locations. Again in 2018, Broecker was pulling collectively appears to be like for a celebrated “Les Misérables” musical parody through which Kenan Thompson performs a lobster in a New York Metropolis diner who pleads to be spared from a buyer who needs to eat him. Determining the top piece and the lobster arms was a selected problem for Broecker. He was at Chelsea Market, the favored foodie vacation spot, on Friday afternoon when it dawned on him: “Isn’t it easier just to see the actual thing in person?”
So he purchased a steamed lobster, with a aspect of melted butter, and introduced it again to the workplace. That method, he says, “Everyone could have a taste of lobster before we dissected it to see exactly what the color looked like, how the antennae go out and how the eyes interface.”
Friday brings further rewrites and costume fittings that may finish after midnight. Saturdays are predictably loopy. At 12:30 p.m., there’s a tech gown rehearsal, which is the primary time the host will get to run by means of their sketches with wigs, costumes and specialty make-up. It goes till about 5:30 p.m., and is adopted by extra fine-tuning. “We usually work through dinner,” Broecker says. Then it’s time for gown rehearsal at 8 p.m. with a full viewers in studio. After that, three extra sketches normally get axed. Throughout the reside present, Broecker tends to hang around close to the management room so he can observe any further adjustments and disperse the related data to the forged and their dressers. “Sometimes a cast member will be in either one sketch or another, so they’re not sure whether they should be in this outfit or that outfit,” he says.
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1. Tom Broecker’s preliminary drawing for the costume worn by Ariana Grande within the “Castrati” sketch. (Tom Broecker/NBC) 2. Ariana Grande, heart, within the costume. (NBC/Will Heath/NBC)
The present wraps at 1 a.m. Then it’s again to work on Monday, with a brand new host, whose appearing potential and inventive sensibility can have a huge effect on the episode.
Ariana Grande, who hosted “SNL” in October, was a standout, Broecker says. “She’s an amazing variety performer and she loves just doing all different kinds of things.” Broecker and his workforce created roughly 200 costumes for the episode, together with a ruffled collar and breeches Grande wore to painting a traumatized castrato and a prosthetic bustline for her flip as Jennifer Coolidge. (Sadly, a Judy Garland homage and a 1910s-set sketch had been minimize.)
Due to the relentless tempo of “SNL” and fixed on-the-fly adjustment it requires, “I always feel secure if we have a host who’s done theater, even high school theater,” Broecker says.
The place the magic lives
On the ninth ground of 30 Rock is the costume storage room Broecker calls the “land of magic” — an enormous area lined from ground to ceiling with racks of clothes and accessories, sorted by period and sort (“period sleepwear,” “ ’80s/’90s long-sleeved shirts,” “rocker shorts”) “I tend to not let people up here,” he says. “This gives you a sense of the scope.”
Broecker commonly pulls objects from the magic room, however leaned on this cache particularly arduous through the top of COVID-19, when many bricks-and-mortar shops in New York Metropolis had been closed. “This became invaluable. This is how we were able to do the show,” he says. Broecker estimates that in any given week, about 60% of the costumes come from modern procuring.
Broecker believes in future in relation to shopping for for the present, usually scooping up objects that can turn out to be useful years later. “When I am out [shopping], if I see something, there’s a reason I’m seeing it,” he says. “At that particular moment, the universe is telling me, I need that. Buy it!”
Gilda Radner, heart, and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in a 1978 episode of “Saturday Night Live.” The chevron swimsuit from the sketch not too long ago surfaced, having been in storage at a former costume designer’s dwelling.
(Al Levine/NBCU Picture Financial institution)
As soon as a forged member leaves the present, their costumes are boxed up, logged in a database and despatched to a warehouse in Brooklyn. “There are things we’re still uncovering,” Broecker says, pulling a crimson and black chevron-striped bathing swimsuit from a rack. It was worn by Gilda Radner in a sketch with Carrie Fisher in 1978, however is in pristine situation. Karen Roston, one of many authentic costume designers on “SNL,” had it in storage at her dwelling for many years. “I nerded out so badly because I didn’t know this was even around anymore,” he says.
By his personal admission, Broecker is especially keen on the ladies of “SNL.” He will get emotional as he talks about making a beaded, asymmetrical bodysuit for Kristen Wiig in “La Maison Du Bang!” a spoof of kitschy European selection exhibits. “Kristen is a goddess,” he says. “I know people always talk about the boys of ‘SNL’ but if you look at the comedy of ‘SNL,’ it’s really [about] the women. They are so special. Not that the guys aren’t special. But the women, I think, are amazing.”
Kristen Wiig in a beaded jumpsuit for the sketch “La Maison Du Bang!” “I know people always talk about the boys of ‘SNL’ but if you look at the comedy of ‘SNL,’ it’s really [about] the women,” Tom Broecker says.
(Will Heath/NBC)
For Broecker, “SNL” is a collective effort. “The only reason we can do what we do in every department is we have the best people in New York City,” he says.
By the use of instance, he recollects how they had been in a position to observe down Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s original “Hamilton” costume for a recent cameo by the star. A costume supervisor at “SNL” had previously worked with “Hamilton” costume designer Paul Tazewell on “West Side Story” and gave him a call. Through Tazewell, they learned that the costume was in a warehouse upstate. Soon enough, an assistant was in a car to retrieve it just in time for broadcast.
“That’s the kind of seamless magic that this place does,” Broecker says. “And that’s why I say — I’m gonna tear up — there’s no place like it.”
