NEW YORK (AP) — Costume designer Tom Broecker has been working at “Saturday Night Live” for more than 30 years so, like the show, he’s become an institution. He’s won one Costume Designers Guild Awards and six Emmy awards for his work on the legendary sketch show, which is celebrating its 50th year this week.
Calling the cast and crew at NBC’s famous Studio 8H “a family,” Broecker says he thrives on the “exhilarating” pace necessary to create dozens of costumes each week, in often less than three days and with constant last-minute changes.
The designer and producer spoke to The Associated Press recently about the “backstage magic” of speed-dressing hosts between sketches and the importance of making them feel welcome. Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: What does the 50-year legacy mean to you?
BROECKER: The easiest, best way to kind of describe what it is working here is that it’s a family. And it’s a unique place where there are people here who are 88, 89, 92, and then there are people who are in college. And so you have that age range of people next to each other and each sort of group sort of intermingling and learning from the other and talking about the old days or the new days or whatever. There’s a cross-pollination between ages and experience and that is super interesting and really valuable, I think.
AP: How can costumes help further comedy on the show?
BROECKER: Usually you notice the costume before the person opens their mouth and you already were starting to laugh before they even said anything. There are times when you do have to do that, when you need the comedy — you open the door and you register “Comedy!” And there are other times when you open the door and you’re like, “OK, my words are going to say the comedy and the visual has to reflect the words.” On “SNL,” we sort of play both sometimes.
AP: Who have been your favorite people to dress?
BROECKER: I love everyone. Dave Chappelle said to me once, “You’re going to get really sick of me.” And I said, “I only have to love you for a week and then I have someone else to love the following week.” With cast members, it’s different, clearly. In terms of hosts, part of my job is to make the hosts feel at ease and to welcome them here. They are guests in our house.
AP: How is the challenge of planning many costumes in just a few days and dressing people so quickly?
BROECKER: It’s exhilarating and terrifying and amazing. You have to have the ability to be flexible and to change and pivot and zig when they’re asking you to zig. And then five minutes later, you’re zagging! Then you’re on the Ferris wheel and then you’re off the Ferris wheel and then you’re in the Tunnel of Love and it truly is a video game ride that we are on every week. We don’t really get scripts until late Wednesday night and we talk with the actors and the writers and everyone Wednesday night. And so we’re really starting Thursday morning at 9 a.m., full throttle doing it.
AP: How do hosts handle that pace?
BROECKER: I warn them and say, OK, so someone at the end of the sketch is going to come, they’re going to grab your hand, pull your shoulder socket out of your arm and they’re going to take you to a dark space. Someone’s going to be stripping your bottom and someone’s going to be stripping your top while someone’s putting on a wig, while someone’s grabbing you from behind. Someone’s telling you to lift your leg. It’s hilarious. After the first time, people are always like, “Yeah, you warned me but I never really imagined what that sort of violation was going to actually be.” It’s pretty intense!
AP: Where do the costumes live?
BROECKER: We have a giant warehouse space here in the building that is sort of general: suits, shirts. Then we have a sort of mixed bag of period clothes and ’80s and ’90s uniforms, biblical, and crazy things like that. It’s a combination each week of pulling in from there. If it’s a period show, maybe going to the couple period places, and then ordering from a whole series of shops like Bloomingdale’s, Saks and Bergdorf’s.
AP: What makes a good host?
BROECKER: Sports people are always the most relaxed, the most interesting hosts because they’re used to playing in arenas of 100,000 people with sound and music and weather. And also, no one’s really expecting them to actually be good on “SNL”! So they come with this relaxed swagger that it’s great to be around, because they’re like, “This isn’t what I do, so I’m here to have a good time.”
For more coverage of the 50th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” visit https://apnews.com/hub/saturday-night-live.
