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No other comedy institutions exist on the same level quite like Saturday Night Live. Since 1975, the late-night sketch show has been a groundbreaking force in American culture, blending live performances with topical humor, satire, and memorable characters that we still quote year after year. The new SNL biopic Saturday Night, transports us backstage to the making of its first-ever episode on Oct. 11, 1975. But the film doesn’t just recreate the chaotic, stressful energy of the 90 minutes leading up to the show going live; it fully captures the essence of the show’s bright young cast, thanks, in part, to the brilliantly executed hair and makeup looks.
When a movie calls for transforming a talented cast into real-life comedy icons, you call in the big guns. In just six short weeks, makeup department head Tricia Sawyer and hair department head Janine Rath Thompson meticulously replicated the looks of legends like Gilda Radner, John Belushi, and Garrett Morris. But because Saturday Night didn’t require building a character’s look from scratch like other films, the hair and makeup teams didn’t have to rely solely on their own expertise — they had a wealth of historical references to draw from.“We were lucky in the fact that these were real people, and there were lots of images on the internet. We could even watch the first episode online,” Sawyer tells TZR.
According to Thompson, director Jason Reitman was “clear and super specific” on how he envisioned the cast, which helped narrow down the looks. The team was also able to turn to a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes photos courtesy of Saturday Night Live’s original photographer, Edie Baskin. “She did amazing work and documented everything, so we got some really great backstage photos that aren’t out there,” says Thompson.
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Ahead, Sawyer and Thompson share all the details on how they transformed the Saturday Night cast into the comedy icons.
Everyone Wigged Out
In the 1970s, during SNL’s early years, long, low-effort hairstyles were common among both men and women, but it still required a lot of work to recreate, or, specifically, a lot of wigs. Thompson says they had to make 28 custom wigs just for the main cast and another 50 for the background actors. “We got to the point where we were just laughing because every time we got another character, we were like, oh, well, their hair doesn’t match, so we need to order one more wig,” she says.
Only a couple of the actors from the main cast used their real hair: Gabriel LaBelle, who plays SNL creator Lorne Michaels, and Rachel Sennott, who plays former SNL writer and Michaels’s then-wife, Rosie Shuster. Labelle’s naturally curly hair had to be straightened with a keratin process every couple of weeks to look like Michaels, while Sennott’s hair was hand-curled using a T3 Switch Kit to create Shuster’s tight spirals. For musician Jon Batiste, who scored the film and plays SNL’s first musical guest, Billy Preston, Thompson sewed three different wigs together to get the shape and volume right.
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Changing Faces
While the wigs were a major focus, the makeup team also had their work cut out for them in bringing these legendary faces to life. Using the right products is vital for getting an authentic, period-appropriate look. The team relied on brands like Charlotte Tilbury, Laura Mercier, and Ilia for base makeup, while brands like Eve Lom, iS Clinical, and La Roche-Posay were go-tos for skin care. “In the mornings, we usually just do a light moisturizer. “[Augustinus] Bader is great for under makeup. It’s one of my favorites for that,” says Sawyer.
But for some characters, the makeup was just the beginning, especially for Jim Henson, played by Nicholas Braun. “We had to age him,” shares Sawyer. “I did a Bluebird Old Age Stipple on his face and drew on broken capillaries, and he had a full beard and mustache that [special effects wigmaker] Sasha Camacho in LA made for me. It was a fun makeup. I think the Jim Henson character was one of my favorites on the show.” There was also a massive amount of faux sideburns needed on set. “We had so many sideburns working at one point, we actually cut up a mustache because we ran out,” Sawyer recalls.
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Not all of the actors were into the fake facial hair. Dylan O’Brien who plays Dan Akroyd, was constantly playing around with his mustache, so much that Cory Michael Smith, who plays Chevy Chase, would jokingly tattle on him. “Sometimes Dylan would just walk it up to us with his mustache in his hand, like, ‘Here, sorry, it fell off.’ And we were like, ‘Oh my god, Dylan, we love you. You took it off,” laughs Sawyer.
A Transformation Through Tweezing
For many actors, the visual transformations created by the hair, makeup, and costume design teams are a huge part of the process. Thompson says that Ella Hunt, who plays Gilda Radner, really wanted to see Radner’s frizzy hair on herself. “I put the wig on the top of her head, and she reached back and grabbed my hands and went, ‘Oh my god, there she is. There it is. I can’t believe it.’ We sat there for a minute, and she started to cry. She said she had been thinking about looking like Gilda Radner for a year, and this was the thing that was going to pull it all together. Hunt also went the extra step to get into character by sacrificing her brows, which she was understandably uncertain about at first. “I shaved her eyebrows so thin,” says Sawyer. “I didn’t want to traumatize her and told her to think about it. And then one day, she came in and was like, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ So that was really cool because I think that changed her look a lot.”
Braun, who stars as both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, was so excited and invested in the roles that he called up the hair and makeup teams to talk before he even signed his contract. “This was way different than just a normal big movie,” says Thompson. “We’ve done a million of those, and some people just sign on the dotted line and do what they’re supposed to do. But it’s more fun when they care, and all of this cast cares. Everybody who was there wanted to be there. It wasn’t just another job, it meant something to them, and that made the whole experience different for us.”